Leonard - Black Hat (4/4/2020)

Apr 05 2020

Chris Haller

Slot Fish

Member Since :
2018
Number of Posts :
129

Call us crazy but my son and I hit Leonard Black Hat today.  45 degrees when we got there around 11:30 and about the same when we left at 3:30.  Wind was manageable and we dealt with with intermittent showers over the course of our fishing time but we were layered and had our Frogg Toggs.  We started at the launch and my son quickly picked up 2 healthy fish (2.5 & 3) on a black and blue chatterbait off the long point near the SW corner of the dam.  Side note, my son has gotten into pouring his own senkos, craws and paddletails.  He has a couple molds and basically takes all our discarded plastics melts them down and then experiments with different colors, glitter, and adds some scent.  He was using one of his paddletails as a trailer on the chatterbait so he was pretty excited about that.   We picked up another off that point and worked the dam and across to the SE corner and back up to the opposite point.  No takers along the dam and the east side.  We then went up to the islands and caught a couple there on trigged lizards.  We went down the east bank and picked up few more and then went back to the the point we started at and got a couple more.  Called it a day after that. 

All told, we caught 9 and lost a handful either at the boat or on a poor hookset.  No big ones as a 3.5 was our biggest with a handful of those 9 in the 2-3 lb range.  I was pleased with the result for about 4 hours of fishing in not so ideal conditions.  If anything it was good to get "unquarantined" for a few hours.  Chatterbait, unwieghted senkos and lizards were the main baits.  I tried a square bill and spinner bait with no luck.  All fish were right on the bank for the most part.

Lake looks to be in good shape.  It has a couple of neat features such as islands and the aforementioned long points.  Water was a little off color, kind of silty but not what I would call muddy.  Water temps were in the upper 50's and there was a good amount of grass.  Saw a bunch of deer off in the woods which is always fun.