With a bass tournament scheduled for Saturday out of Harrison, I decided to launch near the north end of the lake to avoid getting to the boat launch at Sunup and potentially not getting a parking spot. You gotta get up early to get a spot on a tourney day and my wife preferred to sleep a little longer than I normally do.

Once we got launched, I started fishing, and she started reading. She was only about 10 pages into her book when I had the first fish on. We got on the water about 7am and by 10 o'clock, I had released 10 pike and a nice smallie. I finished the day releasing a total of 25 pike and 5 small mouth. The smallies were of decent size and aggressive biters. I found fish in 6-10 feet of water, around weeds but the weeds are not up a lot yet. Most of the beds I found fish in were only about 1-2 feet tall, and well below the surface. With no weeds showing on the surface, I had to rely on saved waypoints and just remembering locations where I had caught fish before. We moved around and caught fish in every spot we stopped at. The little ones were on the feed, and I finally found my first fish of the year that measured over 30" when I hooked this 30 1/2"er near the end of the day. It's been slow for me so far this year when it comes to catching 30" or bigger fish. Water temps were 58-66 degrees throughout the day. I was surprised the fish were not so willing to hit a spinner bait with these temps. Fishing a slower presentation with a bright colored, one piece glide/jerk bait delivered 22 of the 29 fish I caught on the day.

If you're going to fish Cda Lake from hear on out, you better be ready for a bumpy ride after about 11 am. The summer boat traffic has started and that water gets rough when the whole world is out there driving around the lake.

We fished all the way from the north end, to south of Harrison, and it made for a long ride back to the launch, even with my new "Smooth Moves" seat posts. If you haven't taken a boat ride sitting on one of these things, you owe it to yourself to find someone that owns them and try them out. They make for an amazing ride when the water gets rough.

---