Summer has officially arrived and let its presence be known by all.  Water temperatures have warmed up and it has caused weed growth to start growing very quickly and causing a few spots just a week or two ago to be overgrown with weeds and unfishable unless you vertical jig them.  Also because of water temperatures finally warming up it has caused the fish to get very aggressive feeding and it’s making fishing a lot of fun because we are catching fish, it might not be the right species or size but its action.

Reports have been very positive for almost all fish species.  I snuck out Thursday morning to try one of my favorite lakes and went trout fishing.  Fishing was hard due to the windy conditions, but the fish were very active, and it was fun to bring home some nice rainbow trout for the dinner table.  Crappies are finishing spawning and are very aggressive and we were catching them walleye fishing with using four-inch-long soft plastics.  Bluegills are spawning and should be slipping into their summer spots and start feeding aggressively to recover from spawning.  Right now, if you find the edges of the weeds you will find almost every fish species near you and it makes it fun because you do not know exactly for sure what just bite your line.

Over the past weekend I focused a lot of time on walleyes because we were entered into the FM Walleyes Unlimited tournament on Big Pine, so it kept me very busy on focusing on walleyes on a specific lake which is good and bad at the same time.  We pre-fished Thursday night, Friday all day, Saturday most of the day and fished on Father’s Day in the wind and extremely hot conditions.  As I type this report I am still trying to recover from the conditions we faced on the water.  

We found all our fish prior to Sunday sitting at the base of sharp breaks, depth didn’t matter necessarily but it was more of where the break met the flat on the bottom side.  We had best luck with minnows but if we got onto a school of fish a jig and leech produced some nice fish if you could stay on top of them.  Walleyes were extremely aggressive and as a result we were cutting our lines since we couldn’t see our hooks in their mouths.  Jigging raps were also producing and helped cover water quickly if the schools were spreading out over structure.  

Tournament day hit and it went from calm conditions to extremely rough in a matter of minutes.  We fished all our spots and our fish had moved or wouldn’t bite.  We put on the miles moving spots, changing presentations, and bait options to try and put together a game plan to put fish in our boat and we just couldn’t produce anything that would be counted on the score card.  If we were able to keep the fish, we would have had one amazing shore lunch Sunday evening but our fish being landed just weren’t big enough to be counted.

This upcoming week will be busy so I should have a better report next week.  I have Heart of Lakes fishing on Thursday, June 23 and I have the Brady Oberg Legacy Foundation on June 25 where we are taking six veterans trout fishing.  Good luck on the water and stay safe please do not forget to wear your lifejacket.