Dave Beck

We seem to be at the end of the dark winter tunnel with the light of springtime getting brighter every day. These days a sure sign is that the Pierce County back channel boat landing is a pretty busy place. Actually, the service road leading to the Woodshed could be included in that massive boat trailer chaos. As expected, the nicer the day, the closer the trailers get to the far end of that service road. All this activity seems to come around the same time every year: the Vernal Equinox. It’s the official first day of Spring. For reference and some free advice, always work on Dec/ 21, the Winter Solstice (shortest day of the year) and take a vacation day on June 21, the Summer Solstice (longest day of the year). That’s enough cutting bait, it’s time to fish.

Like a lot of my walleye chasing brothers and sisters, I was down on the river on a sun splashed day. I’m not big on fishing in a crowd but I am huge on Friday fish fries in my garage. I also had an ulterior motive: I needed some fish scraps to bait up some traps. With trapping season quickly coming to a close, I still had some tags to fill. I needed to take advantage of any and all resources because critters like walleye scraps as much as I like walleyes. I found a semi-quiet spot and settled into a slow drift. I was more prone to catch saugers from this particular spot but again, I like saugers and conversely critters love those scraps too.

I had made a couple of short drifts and while doing so I noted that not much was being caught by anyone on the river. It was obvious that I was going to have to put my time in with the fish being so tight lipped. It seemed like forever before I landed the first fish and it was a small sauger. That one fish seemed to set the tone and the theme for the day in that every fish I caught was on the small side.  

I moved around to a couple of spots but no matter where I fished it was proving to be totally a small fish day.  Now it’s not easy to catch a catfish when you’re walleye fishing but I did, and guess what? It was small too. I was tempted to keep it but that meal would have been more beans and potatoes than fish. 

When the boat was trailered for the night, I had two saugers in the bag. If I hadn’t needed them for trapping bait, I would have thrown them back. I was able to bait up a couple of traps with the scraps and guess what? I was robbed blind and not a single trap was set off. The fish got the best of me that day, and so did the critters.

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