Yesterday marked another day of learning about the changing conditions as the fall progresses.
The weeds have started to break down and are floating throughout the lake. The surface of the water had a film of debris on it and the water clarity is not as clear as it will be soon.
My new fishing socks that Ethan bought me had me hoping they would bring me luck. We were in the water as the morning daylight started pushing through and I was excited to put my lucky socks to work. The warm weather allowed for a quick getaway from the launch, so we took off towards our first spot we call the football field in anticipation of catching a big one.
Unfortunately, as luck would have it, the big footballs we caught the day before were no where to be found. We searched around in a few holes and found a couple larger fish, but could not find a consistently larger size like we have the last few trips. We started questioning, what could cause this?
The warmer surface temperatures of 61 degrees had us suspicious that the larger fish were seeking deeper water during the day. Could this be the case?
We put in an honest morning of fishing, but after the morning bite, we struggled to entice a bite from most fish that would check out our offering. We even witnessed on more than one occasion fish following our spoons closely, only to turn away and swim the other direction when they got to the boat.
I kept trying to entice a bite as the morning turned to the early afternoon. I tried multiple spoons and color combinations, but the main spoon of choice the rainbows were biting was once again a small Kamlooper spoon that Austin had on his line.
After loading up the boat, we headed to Canadian Tire where we would end up buying the last three 3/8oz spoons they had on the shelf. I also stocked up on 2 Gibbs Fishing gold 45 Koho spoons, because gold seems to be turning into the winning ticket on sunny days.
We decided to once again dissect the stomach contents of a rainbow that did not make it due to him inhaling the spoon and getting the hooks in his gills (one might venture to say spoons are deadly some days, pun intended). The stomach contents of this fish were minimal. There was one fresh goldfish and two well digested goldfish in its stomach. I found it interesting that the size of the goldfish in the stomach of our trout compared to two of our successful spoons this fall was very close to the same size and shape. “Matching the hatch” is exactly what we have been doing here.
Here’s to hoping the weather cooperates and cools down soon. I’m looking forward to meeting more of these footballs we were catching a week ago.
If you haven’t checked out our YouTube channel, here’s a video of how the fishing can be on Dragon Lake using spoons. If you love our content, please subscribe and stay tuned for new content coming later this fall.