Post by spainy79 on Apr 23, 2011 16:54:13 GMT -5
Back in January a friend mentioned to me about renting a boat on Patoka for Good Friday to do some crappie fishing. We got everything set up and couldn't wait for the day to get here. Earlier this week we were stressing pretty good worried that we were going to get rained out or stormed on if we went but we decided to go anyway.
We arrived at Gilligans Boats shortly after 8am and got signed in and paid. We were also able to get minnows from them as well. We were on the water shortly after 8:30 and none of us could take our eyes off the sky. I didn't look promising but we stuck it out. Keep in mind none of us had ever been on Patoka before. We ventured off toward the SE part of the lake and dropped down in the finger with a few nice coves that looked good to fish. The first fish caught was maybe a 7-8 inch crappie. Maybe a minute after that I pulled in an 11 inch slab. We thought we were on it. A couple more small crappie were caught and that was about it. We moved on to next cove and got skunked. The next cove I pulled an 11 inch striper out and that was it. We decided to head east and go under the bridge but the water was up enough we couldn't get the pontoon under the bridge. A bass boat would've made it. We ventured north from there and hit many more coves. We did manage a couple more crappie worth keeping and 2 of the guys landed a largemouth that was just shy of 2 pounds. It did rain on us a couple times but we didn't get soaked. It was probably after 1pm when the fish just shut off. We threw everything at them and could not get a bite. By this time it was 3pm and we were tracking a storm on my buddies phone and it was getting close. Since we hadn't caught anything in roughly 2 hours we decided to call it a day (the boat was ours until 6pm). When we got back to the dock and had everything loaded up that was when we seen the first lightning strike; we couldn't have timed that any better.
In conclusion I'll just quote "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work". The 5 of us did not regret one bit about making the 2 hour drive there and the $40 a piece we spent to rent the pontoon. One person in the group did get skunked while another guy only caught one. I believe me and another guy managed 3 on the day (I landed 1 crappie, 1 striper and 1 13inch LM bass) and the other guy did land several but they were small crappie. No pics on this outing due to the possibility of rain and ruining my camera. Maybe next time.
We arrived at Gilligans Boats shortly after 8am and got signed in and paid. We were also able to get minnows from them as well. We were on the water shortly after 8:30 and none of us could take our eyes off the sky. I didn't look promising but we stuck it out. Keep in mind none of us had ever been on Patoka before. We ventured off toward the SE part of the lake and dropped down in the finger with a few nice coves that looked good to fish. The first fish caught was maybe a 7-8 inch crappie. Maybe a minute after that I pulled in an 11 inch slab. We thought we were on it. A couple more small crappie were caught and that was about it. We moved on to next cove and got skunked. The next cove I pulled an 11 inch striper out and that was it. We decided to head east and go under the bridge but the water was up enough we couldn't get the pontoon under the bridge. A bass boat would've made it. We ventured north from there and hit many more coves. We did manage a couple more crappie worth keeping and 2 of the guys landed a largemouth that was just shy of 2 pounds. It did rain on us a couple times but we didn't get soaked. It was probably after 1pm when the fish just shut off. We threw everything at them and could not get a bite. By this time it was 3pm and we were tracking a storm on my buddies phone and it was getting close. Since we hadn't caught anything in roughly 2 hours we decided to call it a day (the boat was ours until 6pm). When we got back to the dock and had everything loaded up that was when we seen the first lightning strike; we couldn't have timed that any better.
In conclusion I'll just quote "A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work". The 5 of us did not regret one bit about making the 2 hour drive there and the $40 a piece we spent to rent the pontoon. One person in the group did get skunked while another guy only caught one. I believe me and another guy managed 3 on the day (I landed 1 crappie, 1 striper and 1 13inch LM bass) and the other guy did land several but they were small crappie. No pics on this outing due to the possibility of rain and ruining my camera. Maybe next time.