What a fine day to take the kids on a fishing adventure!

The Fish Princess has been looking for a chance to take one of her friends out on the boat and this sunny Sunday afternoon proved to be the perfect opportunity to reintroduce our guest angler, Little O, to fishing (she hadn’t been fishing since about age 6).

We picked up our guest and arrived at the lake at about 1130. We waited a few minutes for the ramp traffic to clear and had the boat out on open water by about 1200. I ran up to the far (NW) end of the lake and took another few minutes to tie-up the ‘right’ gear (and boy did it prove to be the right gear today!). We had our first line in the water by about 1215 and before I could get a second rod in the water we already had our first drive-by.

We ran three rods in total. The first rod was a Lamiglas CGR762L Jared Johnson Kokanee Special paired with a Tica Caiman GJ151 reel. On this outfit we ran a Mack’s Double-D dodger (connected at the leading edge in the 3-hole) and a Mack’s Cha Cha Squidder in the orange creamsicle pattern (60030). This rig was baited with live meal worms (one per hook) and run with a 75’ setback on the port side of the boat. The second rod was the ‘Pretty-in-Pink’ spinning combo which the Fish Princess won in a derby. This rod featured Dick Nite’s pink splatter dodger with a metallic pink Spin-N-Glo. We baited this with pink Pautzke Fire Corn (one kernel per hook) and ran this out the back of the boat on a 90’ setback. The third rod was my trusty dusty old LCI SSR601 spinning rod and Cardinal ultralight spinning reel. On this rod we ran a small 2 blade Jack Lloyd troll with red beads in tandem with a red Spin-N-Glo with mylar wings. This tackle was baited with night crawler chunks and run out the starboard side at a 100’ setback. All lines were surface trolled with about ¾ to 1 ounce of weight (single rubber core sinkers).

On our first pass down the west side of the lake we had 3 fish on and lost them all. This was not unexpected given that we had one rookie and the Fish Princess is still learning too. We also remembered we had forgotten to give the fish a name (a tradition that we’ve found makes the fish feel more ‘welcome’ in our boat). So we chose a name and sure enough, I detected a nibble and sunk the hooks in a fish and reeled in the de-skunker myself. After that it was non-stop action for the girls. Between about 1245 and 1430 we boated 7 feisty silver bullets and lost at least this many more with additional drive-bys that failed to get pinned. The girls were all smiles and we were quite the well oiled team cheering each other on and grabbing the net for each other. The wind remained calm which made it easy to keep a consistent trolling pattern and minimize line tangles and I was especially glad that the fish were willing biters to keep the kids actively engaged. The pretty-in-pink combo was the most consistent producer while the Mack’s lure set-up produced the most savage strikes. The Jack Llyod outfit also produced its share of fish.

We located a good school of fish out in the middle maybe 2/3 of the way back toward the south end of the lake and swung a fairly tight pattern over these to produce many of our fish. As we began to wind-down our day I took a few pictures and we had just one rod fishing as I started cleaning our catch. The girls really wanted an eighth fish so each of them could take home 4. They were glued to the fish finder calling out every fish that was remotely in range of our gear and they even started up the ‘we want a fish’ chant. Just before I finished cleaning fish they actually managed to wish-a-fish and Little O expertly played number 8 to the boat. Final tally was Fish Princess - 3, Little O - 3, and Fish Dawg - 2. We finished cleaning the fish and were back at the ramp by 1445.

The kokes were tasty treats after their trip through the smoker and I’m still smiling thinking about the girls laughing together and cheering for each other. It was neat to see the teamwork when one of them had a fish on and hear them encourage each other if a fish was lost. Overall a fine fishing adventure with the Fish Princess and company!

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