Some buddies and I hit up a Cooling lake in Illinois yesterday. We ended up having 3 boats on the cooling lake and one of the boats went to a lake that was close by to chase muskie.
My boat landed 12 smallies with the biggest being 16.5″ long. It was a very skinny fish, but I will take it for a first for the year. We go our fish on a mix spinnerbaits, lipless cranks, and shakyheads. We got on a pattern on Lipless cranks in the last hour. We boated 6 in the last hour the lake was open (lake is open 8-4). During the last 20 min I lost a big fish before we could see what it was. 10 seconds on the crank and just pulled free 
We also landed a sheephead and a whitebass.
One of the other boats landed 12 fish also. Their two biggest were 15″ and 15.5″ again not giants but they wont complain about catching fish right now. They said the never caught more then one fish on the same bait. So 12 fish and 12 lures. Hard to make a pattern that way.
The other boat out there with us got 4 very small smallies from what they said. No word on what baits he was using.
The guys chasing muskies on the other lake had one follow and that was it. So they joined us for the last two hours on the powerplant lake. They managed one 6 pound sheephead on a spinnerbait.
No, really, nice work. Looks like fun. I can’t wait!
