tackle, tactics and lake notes — kept since 2019
Every October I relearn the same lesson: the fish have not read the calendar, but the baitfish have left the shallows and the pike know it. The retrieve that worked in September is suddenly two speeds too fast. Slow down until the blade barely turns, then slow down again.
The best morning this week came at 7:40, mist still on the water, on a white spinnerbait worked so slowly it was nearly a dead-stick drift between handle turns.
I kept a two-column notebook all season. Live bait (minnows, nightcrawlers) won on cold fronts and in stained water; soft plastics won on every metric that matters to a lazy angler — no bucket, no aerator, no half-dead minnows at the end of a long day.
The ledger now says: carry both, fish the plastic first, and let the first hour of nothing decide for you.
One: the gulls work a line but not the shore. Two: your lure picks up weeds only on the cast, never on the retrieve. Three: the surface is quiet but the sonar keeps marking fish a rod-length off bottom. All three mean the same thing — stop prospecting the flats and get a jig down to the break line.
Restocked this month: 3/8 oz football jigs (green pumpkin), a spool of 12 lb fluorocarbon, and the good landing net handle — replaced, finally, after last season's incident. The old trick of marking line with a sharpie every rod length remains the cheapest range-finder in fishing.