Muddy waters

The cooler weather along with recent rains have cooled the water, bringing the surface temp to 72 degrees (according to my Lawrence, which I don't trust too much).  The rains have also caused the water to become quite muddy.  3 hours of trolling produced absolutely nothing.

I also noticed that a lot of the surface weeds are gone.  I'm not sure if that is due to the rains, winds, temps or what, but they sure aren't there like they were a few weeks ago.

Fishing Report

Yet another fishless day on the water.  Did have a follow and a small fish take a swipe at a bait.

A canoer I passed had a nice bass, and said he was having good luck with them.

The east end of the lake is quite muddy, must be from the recent rain.

Thornapple Lake Walleye

Fished for about 2 hours last night, starting just after dusk.  And managed to catch 2 walleye, one on an 8" SwimWhizz, the other on a gold J13 Rapala.  Both were within about 5-10mins of each other and caught down near the outflow to Thornapple River.  The largest was 20", I didn't measure the smaller one.

First Musky

After almost 2 weeks of fishing, I finally managed to catch my first musky.  It was 34inches, and caught while trolling along the weeds in Thornapple lake last Sat evening.  It took a silver/black jointed J13 rapala.

It tore up the rapala pretty badly, but I've still been fishing it.  It also kinked up the seven-strand leader.  Between this fish, the pike and walleye, and a few tangles I've gone through about 6 leaders a week that get kinked up and look like this:

 So I've decided to go with fluorocarbon leaders.   I've ordered some Berkley Vanish leader material and will be tying up my own, re-using the snaps and swivels from the bad leaders.  I'll post more about that once I get a chance to try it out.

Thornapple Lake 8/11/10

Spent about 3 hours trolling and casting starting at 8:30pm. Caught 1 small (about 16inch) northern pike casting a J11 Rapala in silver tru a weedbed. The day had started out cloudy with rain and occasional thunder and a fairly strong steady south-east wind. By the late afternoon it had cleared and the wind calmed.