Wednesday, May 23, 2012

My first walleye!

I've been wanting to catch and eat some fish for quite some time, but it never works out. If I catch some eating-quality bluegill, I have to go to work and don't have a cooler. If I have a cooler, nobody bites. In an effort to try and catch some food, I made my first trip to Mallard Lake Monday evening.

I was sure that nightcrawlers under a bobber would do the trick, but all I caught were 3" gills. Perhaps all the eating sized ones have been harvested already, perhaps many others have had the same idea I did. Perhaps I shouldn't even eat fish from Mallard, or any other forest preserve lake...

While I had crawlers under the bobber, I threw out one of my favorite go-to lures, the white jig and twister. It really seems like under the right circumstances, that lure can catch anything that swims. All of the sudden I got a hit, another hit, bumpbumpbump, and I had a fish on! When I reeled it in I wasn't sure it was still on, but turns out it was just very small. My first Mallard fish, and my first perch of 2012! Not quite eating size though.... but I was excited to catch it!

Perch!
I've read perch travel in schools, so if there's one there may be more. I continued casting, hoping to find some bigger perch. A few casts later, I got a completely different kind of hit. It felt like branches, and then nothing. I wondered if I'd lost it... When I reeled in I knew almost immediately what it was, and to say I was overjoyed would be a huge understatement.

My first walleye!
I'm pretty sure I shouted "WALLEYE!!!" at the top of my lungs, and everybody on the path stopped and looked at me. That's ok, they should know how excited I was to finally catch a walleye.

Was it the tiniest walleye I could possibly imagine? Yes.
If I dropped it in the grass would it disappear due to it's diminutive size? Absolutely.
Did I care? Not in the least.

One of my main fishing goals for the year was to catch a walleye, and I did it. I admired its ferocious teeth and amazing coloring, forgetting about it's spiked gill plates. It didn't draw blood, but almost.

I took a few pictures, thanked it for letting me catch it, and carefully released it back into the water.

I'm still excited about catching this little guy

5 comments:

  1. Congrats on the Walleye! Stay after them, once you start to figure them out its all down hill. Good luck and tight lines!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Brian! They seem slightly less daunting to catch now...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kudos on your first of many, Wcf archives have a lot of good info on the seasonal movements. Stay after them CB

    ReplyDelete
  4. Very mice little eye there, I find the hardest fish to catch when going after a new species seems to the the first one. The time you are puting into fishing is really paying off. :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the encouragement Dan! Yeah I've been fishing quite a bit this year, and if nothing else I'm getting better at technical stuff like casting and finding fish. Catching them seems to be another issue entirely! Looking forward to my numbers increasing as the year goes on

      Delete

Tell me what you think!

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.