REVENGE OF THE BOGSTALKER or "HARD TELLING NOT KNOWING"

So Sunday night I celebrated fishing 180 days straight by going to the local lake and getting blanked.  Not just blanked, but ugly blanked.  

Normally, I can say with all honestly I at least had a strike on whatever I was using at the time, but that night, the lake literally gave me the middle finger.  Two hours into the trip, there was not a bite to be had and even the obnoxious family of muskrats were conspicuously absent.  

It was an ill omen from the start, but I stayed at it anyway for another hour before finally resigning myself to the fact it was not in the cards for me.

Part of me wanted to admit that the recent warming trend the last week has no doubt sent the walleye and bass scattering, as it is the beginning of December, its a flatland lake and its a well known fact that such circumstances in lakes will result in fish behavior and patterns getting thrown way out of whack.  

The other part of me said that's all fine and good, but it was my timing that was lousy.  And I will admit to that readily. The last few weeks have seen the walleye population begin their trek to the deeper haunts of the lake and only coming in shallow to feed in the late afternoon.  Prime time was long past but the old adage states that fish are always biting somewhere and its our job as anglers to make sure we're there on time.  Early bird gets the worm type of thing.

I didn't go out until about eleven o'clock hoping to ambush one of the bigger walleyes I know are in the lake.  Since it would also be classified loosely as a metro lake, the fish have adapted over the years to feeding when there is least amount of angling pressure...night time. walleyes tend to feed more in low light conditions like dusk and the bigger fish in these types of lakes, I've found over the years, tend to come in even later than that.  Throw into the mix that typically this body of water is stained to murky, night bites for most people don't usually happen.  

I knew it was going to be a long shot but I have caught bigger (for me) walleye in cold water periods on this lake around midnight this year so it wasn't altogether that hair brained of an idea.  

I had originally planned on that outing to be the last day of the streak I had been cultivating since June 9th.  I wanted to go out in style and bring a few fish home for the wife.  She has been on a tear here lately, plowing through the fish in the freezer like a bear fattening up for winter.  A few more fish in the deep freeze wouldn't hurt.  Would save me some time in the shop painting cranks, pouring soft plastics, and tying various assortments of rigs for all manner of freshwater gamefish.  Like always, life stuck a stick in my spokes.

I had no intention on going out on that note, letting my streak die with a zero and a whimper.

Enter Plan B;  or as I like to call it, the Last Chance at Redemption. Or as everyone else refers to it as Gavins Point Dam.  

Gavins Point Dam is the last of the great Missouri River dams just west of Yankton, it is also probably the one that gets hammered on the hardest all year, especially when the walleye bite is on.   Its relative proximity to 4 sizable population centers all within an hours drive makes it a popular destination.  Given its size, when the run is on, its not uncommon to see up to 50 boats milling around below the gates on any given day and the shoreline full of anglers nearly elbow to elbow.  

Its not and never has been what I would call a high percentage big fish spot for me. 

When it came to walleyes and sauger fishing below the dam, I've only caught a few over 20" there,  my share of keepers but  way too many below limit size.  The population is there but after 2 decades of fishing for them from shore mostly, I had given up on ever popping a really nice one out of there. 

But this trip wasn't really about popping a big walleye.  It was about getting a few keepers with some heft I could take home to momma, since the local lake hadn't been kicking any keepers out for me for a while.

So I load up the Squatch 2.0 (my 2017 candy apple red Silverado) and make the hour long drive just after sunset.  On the way up, I'm mentally going over my game plan, what presentations I will probably use based on where I am going to start and alternate options...I want to be as prepared as I can be because I have no idea what to expect.  

I finally arrived at 7:15 p.m. under the shroud of increasing darkness and a clear star filled sky and am greeted by a sight I am not used to seeing.

There is no one there.  Literally no one.  No bank fishermen, no boats.  No cars lining the parking areas along the bank, no lanterns shining like beacons across the river.  All I could hear was the gentle lapping of water along the shoreline and the whisper of a west wind through the naked trees.

My first thought is "Crap.  How bad does a bite have to be to keep everyone but me home?"  Fall is usually one of the best times of year to catch walleye and sauger

That thought burrowed its way deeper into my head as I dug my rods and tackle bag out of the truck and turned my headlamp on to try to find an easy path through the rip rap along the shoreline.  Where I anticipated the waterline to be and where it actually met the shore was a matter of feet.  

"Looks like I wasted some gas" I thought to myself.  Drawdowns are not unusual in the fall.  Fairly typical actually.  I hadn't however, seen a drawdown of this magnitude for a very long time.  But given the drawdown, the warmer weather pattern prevailing across the region and lack of any general info from my "recon network" regarding the status of the bite, any optimism I had was quickly fading.

As I approached the waters edge to make my first cast, the water erupted in an explosive burst.  An entire swathe about 20 yards long by about 15 yards wide were churned to a froth by the school of invasive Asian Carp that had taken offense to my encroachment.  They bolted towards the safety of deeper water, leaving the water to churn angrily in their wake

Nothing like alerting any other fish to my presence.  I fumed.  This could be tougher than I had anticipated.  

I fished fruitlessly for an hour and a half, casting jerkbaits, minnow baits,  bladebaits and paddle tails, pitching jigs, tossing Lindy rigs...moved to a new spot and repeated the whole process.  Same story here as it was back at the local lake.  Nada.  I was starting to get the feeling the whole trip was going to go down in flames.

While I am normally as stubborn as an old mule, over the years I have practiced and preached the key concepts of mobility to search for active or semi-neutral fish.  I knew I had to move to a different location.  The bite wasn't  going to happen where I was at that time and by now it was a little after nine. 

I trekked back to the truck, loaded up my gear, cracked open a cold coke and headed across the river to the north shoreline.  Looked at the thermometer in the Squatch while I was making the trip across the dam.  The current temp was 37 degrees.

I drove along the north side of the river, stopping occasionally to look at the way the current flowed.  The moon was nowhere to be seen but there was enough ambient light from the streetlights and dam to cast a pale blanket of luminescence across the surface.  I knew what I was looking for but was terribly unsure at this this point that I was going to find it.  

About 20 minutes later, I spied a small area I thought might work.  With the reduced flows and the cold water period in full swing, I felt it was a high percentage area to find some walleye.  

The only real caveat to this line of thought was this was the first year I had ever seriously fished for walleye, so while I felt my decision was a step in the right direction,  I didn't have the time on the water nor the experience to accurately judge. Time and techniques would tell.  Or as a co-worker so eloquently stated one day in the break room, "Hard Telling not knowing".

I unloaded my gear again, consisting of my 7' Fenwick HMX paired with a Mitchell 308 Pro spooled with 10lb Trilene XL, a Cabelas Club Bag I use as a  makeshift Tackle bag, all lightly packed with the barest of essentials.  Some jerkbaits, jigs, soft plastics, hooks weights, a few long minnow baits, bladebaits and paddletails.  Mobility and simplicity...Nothing crazy and as light as I can make it.  That makes a world of difference when trying to play mountain goat and walk through and on the uneven shoreline rip rap.

I made my way down to the waters edge, unhooked the jerkbait from my rod eyelet, flipped the the bail, and let it fly into the darkness of the night.

A muffled splash and the gentle tug of the current filled the rod tip up with tension.  Halfway through a slow retrieve filled with twitches and pauses, I felt it.  A light tic, akin to hard plastic brushing against river rock as it tumbles through the current.  

My instincts kicked in and I swept the rod tip and set the hook.  Instantly the rod doubled over and I felt the sluggish weight of a decent fish tug.  She stripped the line from my Mitchell for about 10 seconds, then proceeded to do the tell tale head shake of a bigger fish. I lowered my rod tip as it felt whatever it might be was coming up towards the surface.  I kept constant pressure on her and let her run when she wanted and when she tired, I started finessing her in.  

As I started gaining ground on the fish, I still couldn't tell what it was.  I figured as in times past, I had inadvertently snagged either a small paddlefish or an Asian carp.  The fight the fish was putting up was lackluster at best, no doubt a result of the cold water temps.   As I turned my headlamp on, the unmistakable glow of an eye became readily visible in the 13000 lumens beam.

It was definitely a saugeye and it was a pretty nice one at that.  

I would love to tell you there were a few more powerful surges and runs quick enough to peel the line off my protesting reel so quickly I worried about the drag failing, but that wasn't the case at all.  There was one short lived burst towards freedom and then she gave up.  About a minute later, I had her beached on the shoreline, jerkbait fully engulfed almost to her gullet and tangled in her bleeding gills, which quickly explained her willingness to give up so quickly.

It was only after I dug the hooks out of her gills , put her on a stringer and got her back into the water to see if she would make it that I noticed she had pretty much bled out.    I had every intention of releasing that fish back into the river, but fate wasn't having any of that.  So while I managed to finally pop a nice fish, the sad part of it was I couldn't set her free and realistically expect her to survive.

All in all, I was very glad I took the chance to head up north and try my hand at winter walleye and sauger fishing in rivers.  As has been relayed to me through other "recon" sources the past few days,  there have been a lot of fish taken this size and bigger below the dam so far the last two months.  Me posting this picture to my facebook account kind of let the worm out of the container.  

The fish are there.  Just don't expect a lot of rapid or long lasting action.  Its a crap shoot fishing from shore on any given day, at any given hour.  But from now  until spring, the walleyes will be making their way upriver to stage for spawning.  If you want a good shot at some really nice fish, dust your gear off and get your butts out there.

Keep those lines wet, those hooks sharp and those fish afraid...

BOGSTALKER

NIGHT SHIFT IN THE ARCTIC OR JERKING AROUND THE ICEBERGS

Without fail, I typically find myself the only guy at the local lake fishing after Halloween.  Usually its before even that.  If I do see someone else fishing, they almost always call it quits as the sun sets and the cold comes calling.  Something about those first chilled autumn breezes and lots of anglers shrivel and retreat back into their winter dens.

The ones who do stay and fish near me after sunset don't seem willing to brave much past 7 pm, regardless of how much I iterate that the fish don't typically move into the shallows until after that the first part of fall.

So far this fall I can't count the number of times one of these guys has picked up their gear, made the short trip to their vehicle and loaded it up and before they are even out of eyesight, I'm setting the hook into some gravel lizards or bass.

Make no mistake.  Night fishing in freezing weather is almost always a little sucky no matter how well you dress.  I cannot say its fast paced or even action packed most of the time.  No.  Recalling my military service years,  night fishing in the cold is more akin to forced long marches across grueling terrain.  Its a grind, mentally and physically.  Numb stiff fingers, frosty cheeks, feet like ice blocks, heavy clothing hindering movement.  Throw in some freezing rain, snow and a nice stiff 20 -30 mph wind and you got yourself a literal suck-fest.

But the fish are still biting.  Really they are. 

These days, I'm not much of a live bait kind of guy.  Know it works and could probably save me some time fish-wise, but trying to keep it fresh and alive is not a hassle I even want to consider.  Heresy to most walleye guys but  its not very cost effective from my point of view.  Nor do I want to sit on shore and try to watch a rod tip at night with any amount of wind blowing.  I'd sooner watch paint dry.  

Nope.  I'll stick to the jerkbaits, long minnow baits, jigs and shad raps.  Throw in a few blade baits and some plastic moxies and I'll be a happy angler.  Keeps me active and focused and it makes it easier (but not impossible) to ignore the cold.

Right now, a day after Thanksgiving, the lake still hasn't froze up yet, but the temperatures are getting closer to that fateful and utterly inevitable day.  Maybe another week or two and I'll be scrounging for open water to fish during the daylight hours.  

In the meantime, I'll keep prowling the shorelines for "biters".  Hunting for active fish that have almost forgotten the pressure they had put on them during the warmer months.  

I use the word active fish but its relative to the season.  Active in this case means fish willing to hammer a jerkbait or jig without much cajoling.

Under the cover of darkness is the best time of the day to really pull in some big fish. I've found over the last few years that the adage is certainly true.  Throw in the colder months and fish trying to fatten up for winter and there are definitely nights that will make you forget about the cold.  

So if you do decide to venture into the icy darkness of your local fishing hole, here are some definite things you must consider.

• Make sure to venture into the area doing the daylight hours.  Make some casts to identify snags and other structure and orientate yourself to know where they are at.
• Dress warmer than you need to.  Once the sun drops, so does the temperature and usually pretty fast.  You're also on the waters edge and any wind is going to cut through your clothing pretty easily.
• Use a headlamp.  Forgot about lanterns.  This is stealth guerilla style fishing.  And when you do use your headlamp for something, make sure your back is to the water to prevent its light from shining out over the water. .  Why?  The water has already started to clear due to the cooler temps, the plankton and algae have nearly disappeared.  Any lights that are nearby, the fish have become accustomed too.  Anything out of the ordinary or unusual will send them back into the depths and your fishing spot for the night is compromised.  Note however, this is not usually a problem fishing rivers.  Moving water refracts light differently and you can get away with it in my experience
• Hand warmers of any type are a godsend.  You haven't lived until you've tried to tie good knots with frozen fingers. Good times....good times...
• Heavy or warm waterproof boots.  The ground is usually frozen or close to it.  Standing on it in the darkness can numb your feet quicker than you realize.
• Be prepared for long stretches of no action....none...zip...nada.  When these fish come in, its usually in a short quick lived spurts.
• The moon can affect their behavior, especially its brightness during the fall.  The air is crisp and so is the moonlight.  I've usually had better luck this time of year when the moon is non-existent.  Especially fishing jerkbaits.  The fish seem to home in on the rattles better.
• Grow a beard.  Seriously.  They help keep your face warmer.  
• Travel light.  A few rods, a stringer perhaps, maybe a net.  You don't need your whole tacklebox.  A few removable trays in a small lightweight duffle-bag is really all you need.  Figure out what you need to fish the areas you choose and then minimize as much as you can.  
• Be prepared to clean your rod tip of ice build-up.  Its going to happen and will hamper your casting ability.  As my friend Sheridan pointed out, use rods with large eyelets especially on the rod tips.  This helps prevent the ice from building up so fast.

No doubt many of you have read the articles on wading at night in the fall for big walleyes.  I won't disagree that its an  extremely effective tactic, but its not something I am willing to do.  

I am older now and my balance is crap.  The last thing I want or need is to slip or fall over and have my nuggets immersed in a cold bath of lake water and then having to get the waders off and making my way back to the warmth of my truck. before I get hypothermia.  

I urge caution when considering that option.  Especially if you have little knowledge of the areas you intend to fish.

All in all, night fishing in the fall is very rewarding.  Especially when your effort pays off.  The fish tend to be bigger and thicker, and when they do bite, they are not usually shy, they tend towards aggressive.  

Above all, be safe, use prudence and be stealthy.  The fish are there.  Closer than they have been all year.  All you got to do is brave the cold and go out after them.