Carmi Mixed Bag

I was tired when I got up at 4:15 to head to Carmi with my Dad, but my mind was racing with all the memories of all the successful trips that we have made to this 1,400 plus acre body of water. We were probably on the water at around 6:00 and before I knew it, we had both planer boards and two long lines out. All I can say is that the lake was packed! When we came around the point coming from the Southern launch, we saw a sea of boats trolling along the Eastern shore, the majority of which were just trolling slowly and jigging. About an hour or so of fishing into the trip, I heard a SLAM as the tattle flag on our port side board disappeared. It wasn't long after that that an eleven inch perch was on the stringer. That's typical for Carmi. As we trolled by an impressive collection of boats in this one spot, we saw several small eyes get caught and we decided to try our luck at jigging and joined the party.

After a little while, we got bored of watching everyone else catch fish and made our move. Our next trolling set up consisted of two plugs and two worm harnesses. On our first pass in one of our favorite spots, my Dad picked up a keeper walleye and I caught a feisty smallmouth, which I was hoping actually was a 19 inch walleye until one jump gave the fish's true identity away. As we made our swing to do that same pass again, my Bottom bouncer was on the inside closest to the pivot point of our swing and had come to a complete stop. I glanced over at my rod to ensure that it wasn't going to get hung up and that's when I saw the aggressive hit. I jumped up, grabbed the rod, and set the hook into something BIG! I was in for a battle. With only a 12 pound leader or so, I knew that I didn't want to fight the deep diving fish too aggressively as it wasn't a bass and probably had teeth. After a good 3 minutes of drag stripping runs, we finally got a glimpse of the bottom bouncer and the beautiful northern trailing a couple feet behind it. After the fish spotted the boat, it gave two more runs before my Dad was able to net it. Fish number three was on the stringer.

With another hour or two of trolling under our belts, my Dad managed to catch three more eyes, one of which was a keeper, before the bite died down. We were at the start of our decided "final pass" when we passed over a rock hump. As my DT-10 passed over the edge of this structure, a nice smallmouth smashed it. Of course, we didn't actually see the fish hit, but we did see the Board lurch back. After a couple good jumps, the fish began to tire. Once netted, we took down a measurement, took some pictures and released the fish. Although I hadn't caught any Walleyes, I still had a smile from ear to ear, after all, any fish is a fun fish to catch.

With the trolling rods put away, it was time to head to one of my favorite spots to cast. With sparse weeds and boulders in 10 feet of water I threw on a crankbait and began beating the bank for anything that would bite. On the first cast I picked up an aggressive northern, followed by a ~15 inch smallmouth on the second cast with my Storm Wiggle Wart. We ended up wrapping up the day after I caught another decent pike, that was probably around 27 inches, on a jerkbait. All in all I caught 5 smallies, 4 northerns, and 1 Yellow. My Dad, on the other hand, caught all of the target species specimens for the day, which ended up totalling 4 waldorfs along with one typical Carmi perch. It was a great day on the water and we left with smiles on our faces!!!!