Fished with fellow member Jon David at the Bluffs – starting around 8 and leaving around 2:30 and caught a bunch up (lost count around 55) to 4.5lbs.  42 around 16” and the rest in the next classes up to almost 19”. 

1. Water was around 66-68, didn’t warm too much with the clouds. Wind out of the South around 15mph – prefront, but not immediately prefront as it didn’t rain till around 8. Water was clear to 5+ with a slight stain to it.  
2. Smaller fish were mostly on a TRIG and larger fish were on a swim jig/jig – both in watermelon/lighter green colors.  Also caught around 10 on a muted white spinnerbait with small blades 3/8oz and 2 on a larger 2oz spinnerbait rolled off the bottom in deeper water.  Little too windy to wacky rig though I think that would have been a good pattern, but I threw something with a skirt on it the whole day aside a brief period where I tried to frog/buzzbait with no success.
3. Despite the clear water, I used 50lb braid the whole day as it was much easier to rip through the milfoil which tends to be soft and sticky unlike coon tail or even fresh pond weed. 
4. There is a significant amount of milfoil in the lake – almost all fish were caught adjacent to larger clusters of milfoil – location seemed irrelevant and depth was anything 6FOW or less, but not quite dirt shallow. Pond weed is starting to pop up but not in significant amounts atm. 
5. There is some filamentous algae, probably from the fertlizer they added recently, but should die off in a few weeks when it warms. There were a couple spots of coontail.  All in all, mostly milfoil which is currently easy to fish and a 5/16^th will get to the bottom of it. 
6. Some of the areas I wanted to fish we couldn’t access in fiberglass b/c of the rock (on the South side past the cut where the old big brush pile used to be) but the few casts we made before turning around it was holding fish.  
7. Bigger fish were staged but not spawning. 
8. Some had dropped some eggs (probably a few weeks ago when it was really warm for a spell) but you could tell they hadn’t gone in for another round as most of the fish were still full of eggs. 
9. Didn’t catch many males as they didn’t seem to be actively guarding – it was mostly smaller females feeding up.  I was surprised at the sheer number of females.  You can differentiate by looking at their vent – oblong/swollen for females, round for males.  
10. There were some fish holding to the 14-15FOW areas at the bottom.  I caught a couple on a 2oz spinnerbait rolled off the bottom and they were very pale – hadn’t even thought about moving up to shallow water yet.  We saw them on 360 as well.  
11. The % of fish at various stages of the spawn – pre/during/post – always fascinates me each season based on the weather, water temps, different clarities, etc.  My home lake has darker/warmer water the shaped much differently relative to the wind – so the fish are in a different pattern with more actively spawning at the moment.
12. The key for any lake I’ve fished the last 3 weeks has been large areas of vegetation holding heat – seems to hold the most females and I believe that is to warm their eggs – but that is just a hunch.  I noticed when I transplanted coontail from one area of our lake to a different creek that needs it, the coontail was much warmer than the water even a foot away from it. 
13. Anyhow, this lake fascinates me b/c it has gone through some initial growth and changes, structurallly and battling nature, and it is super fun to observe and see it play out.  
14. Another oddity is that the fish were not in different stages based on the location of the lake – North or South, protected cove or not – at least not yet – which tends to be the case, but I’m used to fishing a longer lake where the North end is much different in terms of temp and clarity than the South end. 
15. Anyhow, thank you to the Landowner for letting us fish and look forward to revisting in summer/fall.