Today we have a guest fishing report from some nice folks from Pennsylvania, Dan and Mary. Earlier in the year they contacted me through my website looking for some information and advice on Black Lake. After a few months of procrastination (I think?) they pulled the trigger and booked their vacation. Below are a few of their pictures and their fishing report (word for word). Hope you enjoy it. I did! P.S. I think Mary's smally looks bigger than Dan's. Sorry Dan...ha ha ha
This is Dan from Pa. Reporting on our trip.
Arrived early on the Sept. 21, excited to get out but as you know it POURED all day. We did not go out but we did have a very nice day in our lake front cabin at Pleasant View watching the lake, college football and a bottle of wine, very relaxing. I was surprised how many people still fished Saturday, guess our age was showing a little!
We originally made reservations for a week but added two more days so we had 8 fishing days, made up for the rainy day. The first day out I found it rather
daunting, so much water, so many shorelines ( we fish ponds at home ) I researched so much prior to the trip and when I got out there it was like a never read a thing about the lake lol! We first went to your recommendation, orchard bay, did pretty good got five and had a few line breaks(had to loosen the drags, not like fishing for 1 pounders at home). That evening talking to the owner of pleasant view we found out the hot spots map is not very accurate and we were actually about a half mile from orchard bay! Once he explained where things were on the map we were good to go after that lol! We found several things challenging, the wind and the weeds. Trying to maneuver a pontoon boat with a trolling motor around the islands in the wind was really hard for two that have no boating experience. We didn't catch a lot of fish but the quality of fish was great( by our standards). We caught 40 bass and 2 small pike and 1 small walleye. We did go to Indian river one afternoon for crappies and stayed a couple hours and caught over 100 including sunfish, you would catch about 50 an hour with two people. After a couple hours of this we decided it was not that much fun and we were going back to " real" fishing! The photo of Mary is with her biggest lm she ever caught 3.02#, the next photos of the sm were both of our
personal records on sm. Mine was 4.06# and hers was 3.00#. The sm were very special for us because the bass we catch here are 100% LM. Boy do they fight! No comparison to our largemouth here, frankly I'm surprised we got them both in the boat, what a thrill, we will never forget it. We caught them both at the same spot on back to back casts ! We got them on day 8 ( thank goodness we added xtra days!). It was a beautiful day (Sat.) we went out at 9:30 and had not caught anything, we stopped for lunch just as we entered the south end of the cut at 2:00 , just a little north of those 3 buoys, we anchored and were casting toward shore for a while and I thought I would cast one away from shore in light weeds and the big one hit. When we finally got it in Mary cast to the same place and got hers! I swear I still had not settled down the next morning!lol. Those two fish made our whole trip, what a thrill! We had a great time and thanks again for all your help, maybe we will see you there some day.
Dan and Mary
Fish On!
Dan 4.06 lb Smally
Mary 3.00 lb Smally
Mary 3.02 lb Largemouth
This is Dan from Pa. Reporting on our trip.
Arrived early on the Sept. 21, excited to get out but as you know it POURED all day. We did not go out but we did have a very nice day in our lake front cabin at Pleasant View watching the lake, college football and a bottle of wine, very relaxing. I was surprised how many people still fished Saturday, guess our age was showing a little!
We originally made reservations for a week but added two more days so we had 8 fishing days, made up for the rainy day. The first day out I found it rather
daunting, so much water, so many shorelines ( we fish ponds at home ) I researched so much prior to the trip and when I got out there it was like a never read a thing about the lake lol! We first went to your recommendation, orchard bay, did pretty good got five and had a few line breaks(had to loosen the drags, not like fishing for 1 pounders at home). That evening talking to the owner of pleasant view we found out the hot spots map is not very accurate and we were actually about a half mile from orchard bay! Once he explained where things were on the map we were good to go after that lol! We found several things challenging, the wind and the weeds. Trying to maneuver a pontoon boat with a trolling motor around the islands in the wind was really hard for two that have no boating experience. We didn't catch a lot of fish but the quality of fish was great( by our standards). We caught 40 bass and 2 small pike and 1 small walleye. We did go to Indian river one afternoon for crappies and stayed a couple hours and caught over 100 including sunfish, you would catch about 50 an hour with two people. After a couple hours of this we decided it was not that much fun and we were going back to " real" fishing! The photo of Mary is with her biggest lm she ever caught 3.02#, the next photos of the sm were both of our
personal records on sm. Mine was 4.06# and hers was 3.00#. The sm were very special for us because the bass we catch here are 100% LM. Boy do they fight! No comparison to our largemouth here, frankly I'm surprised we got them both in the boat, what a thrill, we will never forget it. We caught them both at the same spot on back to back casts ! We got them on day 8 ( thank goodness we added xtra days!). It was a beautiful day (Sat.) we went out at 9:30 and had not caught anything, we stopped for lunch just as we entered the south end of the cut at 2:00 , just a little north of those 3 buoys, we anchored and were casting toward shore for a while and I thought I would cast one away from shore in light weeds and the big one hit. When we finally got it in Mary cast to the same place and got hers! I swear I still had not settled down the next morning!lol. Those two fish made our whole trip, what a thrill! We had a great time and thanks again for all your help, maybe we will see you there some day.
Dan and Mary
Fish On!
