Too speed things up here, I am going to combine practice days 3.  There was a whole lot of fishing done in those 2 days, but only 4 or 5 keepers caught in my boat those days.

Day 3 was calm as predicted, so Ryan & I launched my boat at Miller’s Park and ran across to the Stockbridge area, hunting and pecking on reefs.  We caught a couple smallies pretty quickly, but nothing that would measure.  We kept working our way down, visiting areas around Winnebago point as well.  Same story, nothing but small smallmouth.  The last area we visited was in front of Pipe Creek / Calumet Harbor.  There we found a nice rock pile that lined the channel and we actually caught one nice keeper and had another 3lb fish jump off. Both of those fish fell for a Green Pumpkin Fork Craw on a Picasso Shakedown head.

From there we came back across the lake and started looking for largemouth down around the Long Point Island.  We caught fish all around working our way up towards the mouth of the Fox river.  We consistently found fish holding on rocky points with swim jigs, baby brushhogs & tubes, but not a single keeper.  So Ryan had 3 keeper smallie bites on that shakey craw setup and I was skunked that day as far as keepers go.  Far cry from the 5-6 keeper bites that I had on the 2 previous days.

Day 4 we ran up to Blackbird Island to try some swim jigs around shallow grass that we found on Day 2, Ryan caught a walleye on the first cast and that was it.  We then worked Cowling bay, I was able to get a largemouth close to 3lbs on tube around a willow tree.  We caught several more short fish in the area.  We tried some weed edges in 5-7 feet, catching a few short smallmouth & largemouth in Cowling and the Asylum bays.  We also made a quick pass through some pads between Asylum bays and got two good bites in 15 casts and got out of there.  Time was running short and we had not visited Buttes de Mortes at all, so with 2 hours of practice remaining we headed in there.  The very first clump of pads we pulled into, Ryan got a nice 3lb largie on a dark swim jig.  I had a couple follows as well.  At that point, we felt we had made a mistake not spending more time earlier in the week in this lake.  It was actually quite different then Poygan.  So we spent some more time, found a couple more promising areas and it was time to load up and get ready for the registration & dinner meeting that night.

Based on practice, my game plan was to start in a small section of South Asylum bay and scratch out 3-4 keepers and then spend some time looking for bigger fish and fall back on getting a fish or two off my partners waters if needed.  I felt this area had a decent population of keeper fish, but I did not know if it would hold up to 3 days of my fishing it, let alone any potential competitors as well.  So I knew it would be in my best interest to manage these fish as best as I could.  Practice had been tough and I figured that 5 keepers each day would give a guy a real good shot winning his division and moving on.

Rich
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