Over the winter I purchased a kayak since fellow blogger and fishing partner Bryan Blazek ( see his blog here: http://www.fishing-headquarters.com/afterclassbass/ ) was able to cover some nice water on his last year. Since we are both now fully rigged to chase fish on most bodies of water on our ‘yaks we have taken them out almost once a week the past month and a half. We started the year hitting a few bass on them but lately have been chasing esox since we share the goal of landing a 40″+ musky on the kayaks this year.
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Our ride to the lakes...
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As you can see above we have created a nice little set up to anchor both kayaks to my car. Bryan’s sits right into the contour of mine and they ride well just stacked on top. They load easy and come down just as quick. Then a couple minutes to unload our gear from the back of the car and we hit the water.
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- Just before launch. Both fully rigged. Mine on the right and Bryan’s on the left. Goal for this year: 40+” musky on these!
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Most of our time has been spent on either Lake Patterson or Shabbona. These trips have brought high hopes of big bass and an early season musky. We have had no such luck but have not recieved the skunk yet this year as we have always been able to hit at least a few small bass.
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- We’ve had muskies follow on the ‘yaks but have only caught bass so far this year. At least we haven’t had a skunk this far.
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Yesterday the two of us hit Lake Zurich, the first trip to this paticular lake in a couple years for either of us, and had an amazing afternoon of fishing. Bryan had almost 30 bass and a perch over the course of a few hours and I had about 15 bass and 4 pike. I would have had more bass but we both had a pike bite off our plastics and I decided to target them instead of bass for the second half of the afternoon. Action from some pike makes me just want to hit a decent musky on the kayak so much more.
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- Biggest pike of the day… came in at 24″.
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- Bryan in action on his kayak.
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The kayaks have seen a lot of fish so far this season but nothing of much size. Hopefully the next few months can bring a nice musky and some Lake Michigan kings but either way a day out on the water is better than sitting at work.
The last couple months when I wasn’t working I was fishing which lead to really no time to write about my adventures on the water. Well, now it’s heating up and I need to start getting back into writing. This isn’t going to be to in depth but here’s a recap of the year so far to get ya’ll caught up on what I’ve been up to…
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These are what kept me and Bryan busy over the winter... lots and lots of carp. I hate slime!
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Aside from carp over the winter a few walleye and smallmouth bass were caught on the Fox River on my many excursions with fellow blogger Bryan Blazek. Aside from the carp nothing ever had any real size but we kept busy during the frozen months here in the midwest until the ponds opened back up.
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Once there was open water I took a few trips to my favorite local ponds. Of course I always had a dropshot rig with me, but I also caved in and tossed a lipless crank on a few outings with Frank Weilnhammer. The Clakin’ Rap gave me numbers of fish but the best size fish came on my dropshot.
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- My biggest largemouth of the year so far. Came in at just under 5 lbs.
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The pond hopping quickly became boring. Most of the ponds I fish are less than 15 acres so it can be like shooting fish in a barrel in the spring when the fish really start to feed. So back to the river Bryan and I went. We fished our same stretch knowing fish that seemed to disappear ovre the winter had to come back. We saw pike, walleye, and smallies cruising as the weather began to warm and we knew the action had to turn on at some point. With that confidence we fished the Fox a couple nights a week, most of the time from about 10pm-1am after I was done with work and Bryan was done with school and really saw the river come alive as the walleye run occurred. I caught my personal best smallie and my biggest walleye from Illinois on the Fox in the past month.
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- My best smallie to date: right about 5 lbs… caught just before midnight!
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- My best walleye from Illinois ever. Caught just minutes after the smallie pictured above.
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It’s been a good year so far. I’ve caught a lot of fish on many different bodies of water and it can only get better from here as the summer patterns emerge. It’s going to be a good year.
Chris Loveless
