[IvanRushki]

After hooking into some Pickerel at Highland Lake Saturday, decided to fish Winchester Lake on Sunday.

Arrived at the Launch around 7am, the water was calm and very clear. Could see bottom in 8 feet of water. Fished the first cove to the left of the launch area. Was throwing a rapala clackin' minnow in perch size 7 with a slow retrive and some sweeps and twitches get that rattle shaking and wake up a few pike. My daughter (8 year old who LOVES to fish) was using a swim bait on a round jig head that a kind fisherman gave her with a the promise it would catch fish, forget the name but it was like a fat ribbed grub, but had a paddle tail. A few pikerel swirled at the boat bot there were no takers. Also switched rods here and there with a chartreuse spinner bait, read a few folks had hooked into pike with them.
Again no takers so we worked our way to the stumps, Kept up with the spinner bait and tied a Havoc Pit Boss on a weighted Ewg and swam/bounced it around in the stumps. Got one hit in the stumps, a rock bass that could barely get that pit boss in his mouth. A few other fisherman were catching pickerel on shiners as well. Winchester had begun to live up to its nick name as the wind picked up and made it rather cold and difficult to fish the plastics, I'm 6'3 and make and excellent sail, and I was sure to leave my anchor in the garage to keep the boat from rolling around on the trailer when i'm at work.
My daughter was getting cold so we headed to the coves down on the end to the right to get out of the wind and let the sun warm us up a bit. Got to explore the excellent cover, and switched to a Havoc Hawk Hawg in Junebug weightless on an ewg and began pitchin it to cover as we worked our way around the sheltered coves. Saw the top of a submerged log and hit a perfect cast, let it drop slow the gave it a twitch and THUMP, Fish on, Set the hook and held on as some line peeled from the reel. Got her into the boat and really regretted not picking up that scale in the sporting goods department, first fish i would have weighed. Got a quick picture, thanked it for being a beautiful fish, and eased it back into the water.

After that decided to call it a morning, so we packed up headed back to the launch.
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Fishing is like a stack of Hungry Man Flapjacks, If you don't have any syrup there better be some jam in the cupboard.

PB : 34" Northen Pike 13# Bantam Lake.

[Nickp]

Nice report! Highlands in a real funk right now... The largemouth are in inches of water super spooky and the smallies are in full spawn mode.