March 19, 2006

Fishing at Shabbona

Strange day today !!!

Hit Shabbona for the first time in 2006. Water temp was 40 to 44 degrees. Visibility 6 to 18 inches, depending on where you were. Lake is full, the drought effect is over, water is even going over the spillway. Got to the lake at noon and fished until 5 PM. The docks aren't in yet , so launching is a little bit of a pain.

I was hoping for a muskie, but no dice. Fish of the day was a nice feisty 18.25 inch bass, he went for the Rapala shallow shad rap (Rapala SSR 8, shad pattern, Discontinued pattern and size !!??!!) worked with a stop and go retrieve in 4-5 feet of water. Runner up fish was this 30 inch Carp.

I don't know if this fish struck my bait or got snagged, when I first saw him, I figured it was a foul-hook, but when he got close, he was hooked in the mouth !!??!!?? Anyway, he was fun to have yanking on my rod.

Things got weirder when I was casting the rocks on the roadbed. I started snagging shad, left and right with my shad rap,

 then something smacked my rod, but felt weird, it was a fish, but didn't feel right, turns out to be 2 Big shad snagged at the same time !!!  One on each treble, and these were Big shad.

Then I spotted this raccoon stranded up on a log in the No Motor Zone. He apparently had swam out to this log, dried off, and Really didn't want to get back in the water again.

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