A quick note: I’ve gotten several nice emails about my Saylorville entries on In-depthfishing.com and Iowaoutdoors.com. Thanks, I’m glad you like them but to be truthful, these are just entries in my Excel fishing log. I just cut and paste them here (sometimes with a line or two redacted 
Wednesday, September 8, 2004
Wednesday was another beautiful day on Saylorville. I fished the North (or East, depending on how you look at it) shore for a couple hours in the afternoon while the kids occupied themselves with sand (mud) castles and scavenging.
The wind was nearly flat calm and the gulls were inactive. As I waded in up to my knees, clouds of shad the size of pool tables moved passed. If I could charter a flight to Key West to fish the flats it would not have been any more pleasant then this perfect day on the Ville. I began casting to the outside of the schools of shad. The second cast with a Kastmaster produced a nice big white bass. I knew then that the stripers were still there and this trip would be fun. Next half a dozen casts produced nothing.
Out of the corner of my eye I noticed some activity around a rock on top of a sandbar. I switched over to a shad floating plug while I watched the rock. This time a fish came clear out of the water chasing shad. Not very white bass-like. One cast later I found out why. A nice 3.5lb LM bass. He really stripped the line off my little ultralight Avocet reel; for a few moments I thought I had a fantastic wiper. A small group of LM bass were pinning shad up against the sandbar and rock. I caught 4 more in quick order.
The gulls became active and casting underneath them produced 7 more whites. My kids indicated it was time to go and I packed it in. 13 fish in 2 hours.
Thursday, September 9, 2004
Thursday afternoon was windy. If you are on the right side of the reservoir the wind is good for the whites as it sweeps the shad back against the sandbars and small coves. As I walked down to the shore, the gulls were staging and diving.
You could drop two grand on fish finding sonar and it still wouldn’t find the whites as well as a handful of gulls. I approached cautiously so not to spook the birds and began to cast. 7 whites in 45 minutes. It would have been more if I had stuck with spoons but I took the opportunity to experiment with 4 new plugs. None of them were exceptional.
After only 45 minutes, my son reminded me that I promised to let him see the tanks up at Camp Dodge before we hit the grocery store. So, by the numbers, it was actually a more productive trip thanks to the wind, but Wednesday was the winner between the two.
Go fish…
Dave