Its hot here in northern Wisconsin. I’m mean like really hot. Temps have been in the mid to high 80°s since I got home from Arkansas Monday. While Granny and I wanted to take out our new Striker raft and float a river on today’s summer solstice, a full “longest day of the year” roasting in the sun wasn’t in the cards. Instead we broke out the Blue Bathtub and hit a nearby lake for a couple hours this morning.
Its so incredibly peaceful being on a Northwoods lake early in the morning. Our drift boat boat gets us to lakes that aren’t heavily fished. Today we were entirely by ourselves. Temps were still cool at 8 AM and the suspense of watching our popper jiggle through the lily pads was exhilarating. It didn’t take but five minutes before I heard a slurp. I was scanning for snapping turtles – just because I love seeing them. When I turned to the slurp sound Granny had my 6-weight Winston bent deep.
Keep your rod high when fighting a fish around weeds and don’t let them steal too much line. All fish like to bury themselves in the dense water foliage. If they manage to dig deep, chances are you won’t pull them out before breaking your tippet. Granny has had huge success so far this year leaning on and fighting fish properly. Within a couple minutes she had her a handsome 14” largemouth.
We caught a couple nice largemouth. I did some crappie fishing with a silver bead head black mini bugger. While I managed one small crappie and a few bluegill, I also caught two 23” pike. Because I was crappie fishing I didn’t have any wire bite tippet so I was lucky to land each one. Normally the razor sharp teeth sever even a 0X tippet.
I wish we could have taken advantage of the longest day of the year by fishing at least a 14 hour day, kind of like my famous Henry’s Fork Marathon. But as you get older, you get wiser. We topped out at 87°s today and not only would a mini marathon in such heat put a hurt on a couple humans, stressing fish that you plan to release in such heat isn’t so good either. We’ll hope for cooler weather Friday and target that as our next big day on the water.
The week around solstice is my favorite time to fish through the night in Alaska. Grayling and trout on dry flies ant midnight especially!
I’d love to do what you just did too, sounds really pleasant.
I think no matter where you are in the northern hemisphere the summer solstice is great. We don’t have midnight sun like you but I can see perfectly at 4 AM and take it all the way till 10:30 PM. Its amazing. I’m glad its not year-round or I would never get any rest! Enjoy and thanks for reading the blog.
Jeff,
Sorry about the heat – but your fishing setting is beautiful!
Tad
Its really nice and as long as we get out early the heat isn’t an issue. Actually its good because when I get home I sit at my computer next to my fan and get some work done!
2 Pike without wire! Nice. Granny continues to get it done!