Blown out of the water! 1/18/2015

[Andy is OptiMystic]

High hopes for a good start to 2015 didn't pan out today. I went to my home lake with a couple of friends paddling kayaks. We ended up cutting the day short because of the wind.

It was my first time out with my new fish finder and it didn't work. Can't detect transducer. One of my buddies also has a portable Hummingbird and we were able to determine that my transducer is fine. The head doesn't work. So I will contact Hummingbird tomorrow and decide whether to send them the head or just return the unit (Amazon marketplace purchase in late December). It was a really good deal, so if Hummingbird only makes me pay little or no shipping I will send it in.

I still paddled down to where I expected to find bait and panfish schooled up deep, into the teeth of a building wind. I went ahead and tried it blindly, drop shotting a tiny jig tipped with a little piece of Gulp worm and I got some taps on it that I am reasonably sure were fish, but I was drifting way too fast. I tried jigging a spoon a little while for larger fish, but the wind was picking up more and I couldn't go slow enough in deep water.

Tried a couple of protected coves and didn't have any success; they don't seem to be shallow. Getting from place to place in the wind was grueling. One of my buddies paddled back to the ramp and packed it in. I hung with it a little longer, but the only places I could find out of the wind were shallow and seemed to be fishless (I know they really weren't completely, but I can't prove that).

I over spooled my new UL reel and had to remove a bunch of it in one tangle. When it happened a second time, I just reeled it in and put it away, switching to nothing but the light rod.

Not my finest hour, but there were fixable issues; the fish finder (which is really hard to do without for the type of fishing I planned to do) and the overspooled reel. The wind I can't really do anything about. Later in the year, there will be active fish in shallow coves. It was a "shakedown cruise" and some stuff didn't handle the shaking. Take care of it and move on. I did manage to test the jig head painted with my wife's embossing powder and it works fine.

It was a good hard paddle and something of an adventure. If I had known the wind would be like that I might have tried the river. Oh well; onward and upward...

[Andy is OptiMystic]

I have been keeping it generic not because it is a big secret but because I am trying to get better about approaching pretty much any similar situation. That said, a little googling about a few things I have said about what I call my home lake will reveal it is Shearon Harris. 

[Slip Sinker]

too bad about the humminbird ... i gave my father a humminbird 400c some time in the mid eighties... it had a portable ice pack and ran from two 6vt lantern cells ... it was later passed down to me and i had it for a few years .. still going strong.

yep wind is the killer beast for me... without boat control my fishing day is largely a bust.

what lake were you fishing?

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

Love the outdoors and I certainly agree with getting out there........taking in all the sights......eagles will be building/adding to their nests now.....

[Andy is OptiMystic]

We were post front and there were a few boats out; mostly bass boats probing the coves. If I had the electronics working and was seeing fish and not getting blown off them and not catching, I would be questioning my approach. It was stuff I could not control and won't always happen, so the fishing didn't pan out but I did find wrinkles to iron out so I am more likely take advantage when conditions are more favorable. I also enjoy paddling a kayak. I did see eagles and herons and do something outside to shake the winter cabin fever.

[Jeffrey D. Abney]

Nice trip report Andy......the most impressive part of your effort to me is your determination when faced with obstacles......All the local launches were empty over here this morning......most folks gave up based on the impending front but I had to get out if only for a couple hours......I started calm and endured the rising southerly wind as the front raced eastward.......I was anchored on a deep hole so not a bad impact......good luck next time out.....