2 days on a new lake

I ve wanted to visit this lake for like 2 years… never done it though… so when some three days ago Karel calls me he wants to go fish this lake I said YES. We arrived in the afternoon, rigged up and launched very soon. We had some information on this lake from a friend, so we followed his advice and paddled ca 2 kms out into the open water to look for underwater hills and plateaus.

To be honest I cant imagine fishing this lake without a fishfinder, normally, the shape of the bank gives you clues about what it is like underwater, well… not here it dont. We regularly fish big dams that were formed in valleys, the underwater structure is pretty straightforward there. On this new lake, it was something very different. I spent a lot of time just paddling around, watching the bottom structure and committing new information to memory for trips later this autumn. It was more of a recon trip for us, gather information about hotspots for later.

We got some fish though. The perch were scattered around, you could catch them on surface poppers from the bank, or in 15 metres depth on ridges and underwater structure. We got asp as well, again one or surface bait and one in 9m depth on soft plastic. Really weird to catch asp this deep…

Asp on surface walker

As always we struggled to find the correct color and vibration patter for our soft plastics. I have an experience I gotta share, maybe you will find it useful.

I was paddling around checking out the bottom structure when I saw a small dead baitfish floating on the surface. It was a small ruffe. I searched my  tackle box and found a 10cm softbait that matched the colors of the ruffe and I had bites right away.

ruffe

Perch on brown and white softbait

Some zanders also made appearance and a pike too. We paddled more than we fished though, so we ll be back soon, when the temperatures drop and fish become more aggressive.