Well I finally made it up to Sherman this year for the first time since the ice left the lake, and I’m glad I went. A lot of this will be somewhat repeated from previous reports, so I’ll try to keep it short.
I made it up there on Thursday and didn’t fish a lot (only about 3 hours in the evening), but did find 3 walleyes and about 8 crappies up shallow back in trail 6 in a little cove I like to fish. I see someone went wild back there with treepiles, but that’ll help keep some fish in there I’m sure. Caught most all fish with a wobble headed jig with a yellow grub.
On Friday, I was up early and out in trail 3 tossing jigs and got a walleye and a couple crappies. Then I met up with Jorg and Greg Wibbels (members flatwalter, and I think Greg might be flatwater?) as they were heading up onto a point in the north arm of the lake to try for walleyes. I met them up there and watched them catch quite a few, and I caught a few as well. Leeches seemed to work real well, but so did crawlers. The fish really seemed to be in 10 FOW. Not 9, not 11….10! My buddy Quint met me up there in the afternoon, so we went back out to the same point (think it’s the same one that Zach mentioned in his Sherman report) and just caught tons of walleyes for a few hours. The most walleyes my buddy Q has ever caught in his life, so that was a good time. Q also reeled up a perch, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen at Sherman before. We then moved up into some coves and caught a few crappies before dark on jigs/grubs.
On Saturday, the crappie tournament started at 8, and it was a struggle. We mainly concentrated on shallower water, but I really think we would have done better out in deeper water. But we tried to work areas that were real close to deeper water, and that’s where we caught most of our fish. We only caught 6 keepers all day, so we weighed the best 5 for 3.01lbs in the tourny, so we didn’t finish too well, but still had a good time. We didn’t get our first fish in the boat until about 11am and got our 5th keeper about 1pm. I’m convinced we were probably some of the hardest working anglers in the tourny….I had the boat up under trees, and I was on my hands and knees at times dipping for fish. That really seemed to be the key; most fish were caught by what I call dipping-just letting the jig hang there in front of them with little or no movement at all. I had to use the 12′ rod at times, and that’s a lot of fun when you hook a crappie on that thing. We also caught quite a few walleyes up in the trees while crappie fishing. Not one keeper walleye all weekend, but caught lots of them. The key color for us all three days was yellow.
There were some discussions about whether or not the crappies were already done spawning, and I agree with Zach in that they were on the downhill slide of being done. But I had a couple guys swear up and down that they were just starting, so who knows.
If you want to have a good time and catch lots of fish with a legitimate shot at a good fish or two, head to Sherman.
