NBC Day At Willard 6-16-22

[TubeDude]

Had my list of excuses all ready.  Full moon.  Too soon after a cold front.  Water temps have dropped too low.  Water level still too low.  All maybe the reason why I didn’t find any walleyes or wipers.  But the everlovin’ kitties still came out to play.  And I fish for fun…not prestige.  So I just enjoyed the heck out of it.
 
Launched at the Willard Bay south marina about 6:30 am.  A cool 50 degree air temp…warming to 80 by noon departure and a heck of a lot hotter by late afternoon.  Water temps started out just over 64 and warmed to almost 67 by noonish.  Bet they get quite a bit warmer in the next day or so.


I brought both crawlers and minnows.  Fished both on a procession of whirly flig crawler rigs…including some new “wide body” models…and on plain single hook whirlies.  I saw very little on sonar that looked like anything other than catfish…and caught less.  But, as already stated, I got a lot of love from the whiskery clan.  Only a couple of things I tried that did not get a positive vote from kittykind.  I caught about a dozen and kept 3 for the fillet demo video.
 

I might add that I covered a LOT of water…at least for a motorized float tube.  Made big S turns through all depths from about 5’ out to almost 13 feet.  Saw the most fishy marks in the 11 to 12 foot depth range and that’s where I caught the most fish.
 
Noticed quite a bit of residual carp splashing activity along the shoreline.  But did not observe any “boil” action others have recently reported.  However, I did notice a large group of terns swooping and diving over one area just off the west dike south of the channel entrance.  But I couldn’t actually see any of them scoring any food from the water.  Looked more like swallows diving for bugs.
 
I have had some requests to make some videos of safely handling catfish while in my tube…and of filleting some later at the fish cleaning station.  So I have included segments on both of those subjects in the posted video.  Using my powerful Bubba Blade electric I turn three nice cats into skinless and boneless fillets in about 2.5 minutes.  For those who care, the eggs in the females are still far from being ready to spawn.  Weird year.

   

I tried to keep track of the boating activity and observed that there was no real congregation of boats anywhere…all morning.  Instead, all boats seemed to just be moving around randomly…using the “biblical” system…”seek and ye shall find”  (or not).  And when I hit the cleaning station the only other two folks there had no wild tales of walleye limits.  In fact, one only had a few cats and the other had two of the smallest walleyes I have seen anyone keep out of Willard.  And most other boats coming in were leaving without hitting the cleaning station.  I’m guessing it’s still a day or two too soon after the cold front for the glut to resume.  And with more unsettled weather forecast for the weekend, who knows what will happen next. 



I got off the water just in time.  The power squadron was getting ready to make an assault.


(LINK TO VIDEO)

[doitall5000]

Had my list of excuses all ready.  Full moon.  Too soon after a cold front.  Water temps have dropped too low.  Water level still too low.  All maybe the reason why I didn’t find any walleyes or wipers.  But the everlovin’ kitties still came out to play.  And I fish for fun…not prestige.  So I just enjoyed the heck out of it.
 
Launched at the Willard Bay south marina about 6:30 am.  A cool 50 degree air temp…warming to 80 by noon departure and a heck of a lot hotter by late afternoon.  Water temps started out just over 64 and warmed to almost 67 by noonish.  Bet they get quite a bit warmer in the next day or so.


I brought both crawlers and minnows.  Fished both on a procession of whirly flig crawler rigs…including some new “wide body” models…and on plain single hook whirlies.  I saw very little on sonar that looked like anything other than catfish…and caught less.  But, as already stated, I got a lot of love from the whiskery clan.  Only a couple of things I tried that did not get a positive vote from kittykind.  I caught about a dozen and kept 3 for the fillet demo video.
 

I might add that I covered a LOT of water…at least for a motorized float tube.  Made big S turns through all depths from about 5’ out to almost 13 feet.  Saw the most fishy marks in the 11 to 12 foot depth range and that’s where I caught the most fish.
 
Noticed quite a bit of residual carp splashing activity along the shoreline.  But did not observe any “boil” action others have recently reported.  However, I did notice a large group of terns swooping and diving over one area just off the west dike south of the channel entrance.  But I couldn’t actually see any of them scoring any food from the water.  Looked more like swallows diving for bugs.
 
I have had some requests to make some videos of safely handling catfish while in my tube…and of filleting some later at the fish cleaning station.  So I have included segments on both of those subjects in the posted video.  Using my powerful Bubba Blade electric I turn three nice cats into skinless and boneless fillets in about 2.5 minutes.  For those who care, the eggs in the females are still far from being ready to spawn.  Weird year.

   

I tried to keep track of the boating activity and observed that there was no real congregation of boats anywhere…all morning.  Instead, all boats seemed to just be moving around randomly…using the “biblical” system…”seek and ye shall find”  (or not).  And when I hit the cleaning station the only other two folks there had no wild tales of walleye limits.  In fact, one only had a few cats and the other had two of the smallest walleyes I have seen anyone keep out of Willard.  And most other boats coming in were leaving without hitting the cleaning station.  I’m guessing it’s still a day or two too soon after the cold front for the glut to resume.  And with more unsettled weather forecast for the weekend, who knows what will happen next. 



I got off the water just in time.  The power squadron was getting ready to make an assault.


(LINK TO VIDEO)

Thanks for sharing your cleaning skills.
Just to add a bit, people always start the grinder before stuffing the fish in the disposal. 
I could see on your video there were lots of fish on the finder. They were suspended,  with none on the bottom. 
Also no other boats!

[TubeDude]

Thanks for sharing your cleaning skills.
Just to add a bit, people always start the grinder before stuffing the fish in the disposal. 
I could see on your video there were lots of fish on the finder. They were suspended,  with none on the bottom. 
Also no other boats!

There were already a couple of guys cleaning fish and had the grinder on when I got there.  But I have had the unhappy experience most of us have had...of finding the fish cleaning station inoperable because some doofus filled the thing up with fish before turning on the grinder.  AAAAAARRRRRGGGGG. 

Yes, there were some smaller fish at mid depth...but very few to none of the nice inverted Vs of substantial fish like walleyes or wipers...suspended just off the bottom.  And I only saw a few of the big bumps on the bottom that are usually indicative of cats.  But I was dragging my whirly fligs at about .75 mph...a good distance behind my tube...and I suspect that a lot of the fish I caught came in from the side in response to the vibration of the little blades. 

And, yes, I got lonely out there by my ownself.  Well, not really.  I did have a few curious boaters cruise by within lookeelou range but none were brave enough to holler a greeting or ask what the heck I was doing.  Oh yeah, I also had some roar by as close as they could without violating the proximity law...just because they could.  Always cool to watch the "sawblade" on the bottom of my sonar while bobbing up and down from those nutjobs.  Much better to be lonely though than to be surrounded by "sportsmen" trying to help me harvest the fish I have found.  When the crappies are in and active out from the north marina all I have to do is bring in one fish and I immediately have several new close "friends".  What fries me though is when I move even a little closer to them they holler at me for getting too close.