The forecast for this past weekend wasn’t the greatest and I rolled the dice and chose Sunday to try my luck on the Lake. First thing I noticed while launching is that the lake level is up and a little less that 1 foot away from its normal summer pool height. After launching, I decided to do a bit of scouting which showed that all of the creeks, in the south end of the lake, were running high and brown. Unexpectedly the Cedar wasn’t too off color but something upstream had dumped quite a bit of oil into the river and turned the southwest end of the lake into a giant oil slick. I ran back to South Point and I had my line in the water by 10:00am. Shortly thereafter I had my only fish of the day and brought a feisty 16” cutt to the boat. I released the fish and spent the rest of the day trying out various gear, depths and speeds with no luck. The surface temps haven’t changed for nearly a month now and were between 44 and 45 degrees everywhere I traveled. As for the weather, it never really warmed up as was forecast and stayed cold and damp the entire time I was on the water. The winds were mostly out of the north which, I have learned from past experience, really puts a damper on the bite.

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