Fish Ohio Saugeye trip

Three generations of moke family launched the boat at Alum Creek about noon on 7/26/2014 to do some fishing. The pleasure boaters were right on our tail, but our mindset was to embrace sharing the lake. Leaving the boat ramp, we encountered a stiff south wind which made drifting and trolling easy with 3/4 oz bottom bouncers and worm harness, and it also meant we could concentrate on fishing with minimal distraction of boat control. In shallower water, we caught more species but not the target keeper saugeye. Throughout the day, we caught 8 different species including crappie, largemouth, yellow perch, rock bass, sunfish, channel catfish, white bass, and saugeye.

Pappy was catching most of the fish on a green harness with gold hammered blade; the only one I had on the boat. So, pappy did what pappy's do; gave his harness to Kurt and retired for nap. Wasn't long when pappy's nap was interrupted by this guy.

 

Kurt caught it completely on his own; his only assistance was netting the brute. That's all we heard about the rest of the day, and we loved all the ribbing we got about Kurt's big fish of the day. At 7 years old, Kurt is really an accomplished fisherman. In last 30 days, Kurt has two "Fish Ohio" muskies and now a saugeye.

At 4pm, we headed to the ramp to avoid the approaching storm, but the pleasure boaters beat us to it. With about 30 boats lined up at the ramp, we put the rain fly up to ride out the storm (including small hail on the deck), and then got back to fishing.

 We caught one keeper saugeye during the storm. After the storm, we found the fish stacked up in 20+ ft. of water; on two passes we had double saugeye hookups, and missed a triple because pappy had a swing and miss.

Here is another 17 inch saugeye that Kurt caught.

 

 Most of the keeper saugeye were taken in 20 to 25 feet of water. We ended up keeping saugeye of 18, 24, 17, 16.5 and 16 inches as well as a yellow perch that took the hook too deep.

Target speed was between 1.0 and 1.5mph most of the day. When action slowed, we change speed and direction with s-curves over the target depth. Here is a picture of the total catch.

 

 Kurt could not wait for Mom and Luke to get home from the fair to show off his catch.