Headed out solo to Potholes on Saturday morning, all my buddies bailed on me or were doing something called hunting. Anyway, launched out of the state park at 0730 and headed over to fish some of the humps along the face of the dunes. The wind was already blowing fairly strong but I anchored over the top of a hump that was marking a lot of fish on my Lowrance.

I recently watched a couple of videos on how to use a casting spoon for walleyes and thought I would give it a try. I was using a 1/2 oz. Kastmaster with gold on one side and a perch pattern on the other. After a little fan casting I hooked my first eye, a nice fat 19 incher who smacked the crap out of my spoon. I caught a few more 13-14 inch eyes and then hooked into a nice 24 inch eye that after a quick pic I released. I knew that some of the fish I had marked were probably bluegills so I hung another line over the side that had a small piece of worm and also a crappie jig. The number of bites I had from those gills was actually interfering with my walleye fishing but on a lite rod it was a lot of fun. I caught a dozen or so gills and kept 9 really nice sized ones.

The wind started picking up, almost whitecaps, and casting became harder so I decided to troll the humps along the dunes. I trolled up a half a dozen more eyes including a 23 incher. A chartreuse smile blade and silver beads were once again the best producer. All told I caught over a dozen eyes, over a dozen bluegills, a nice 3 lb. largemouth and two bullheads. I kept 4 eyes and 9 gills, everything else was released. The wind picked up even more about 1330 so I called it a day. BTW the water temp has dropped 9 degrees in the last two weeks, from 65 down to 56.

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