Kent Lake Opener

[dartag]

we started the day off flipping a coin to see who would get control of the boat for the first hour.  I won so we started off up the east bank. The water seemed much darker that years past.  Cheetam and myself are like Felix and Oscar from the odd couple.  I love to fish shallow and he is the deep crankbait master.  after my hour only produced 1 dink for him on a trap he took over.  we fished deeper with little results.  He finally caught a 3.11 on a trap.  I had to relent and get some crankbaits out and rig them.  I cught a nice one right away.  ( maybe them things work ),   Because of the strong winds we worked upriver.  at one point we were doing 3 mph on my gps without the trolling motor.  we were working a pocket when i noticed the Dark clound building to the west.  first sign of lightning we headed out.  by the time we got to the main river the storm was there.  deciding not to chance it we headed for the Buno bridge.  we got there to find Benny, Jack, a family in an alum boat.  Dan came in after that.  5 boats hiding from the storm.  It was nice to be under cover until Camera guy took a flash photo.  I thougt it was lightning and almost hit the deck.  after the storm we went back and fished another hour and caught a couple dinks.    sounds like a lot of guys did better than we did but it was great to be out there.  also my crankbaits are now clean from washing them.  never caught a fish on a Half Senko. 

[Durand Dan]

I arrived about 7am and proceeded to the west launch. I had decided the night before to put in on that side due to the anticiapated crowd at the east side. Right after I launched I was throwing a rattletrap and hooked up what felt like a good one. It managed top shake off and I moved to the island in front of the fishing pier, There I managed a short on on the trap and started working toward the east flats. Show fishing is all I can say about yesterday. I motored up and decided to fish the southern shoreline with a jig. Again just two shorts. As I came aroud a poit on the western shoreline I hooked a monster dropshotting a Great Lakes perch in about 9ft of water. I was able to get it to the boat and lose it as I looked for the net. Well I endeed up with 4 shorts and one that was a little over 14". All largemouth. I was loading when the storms stated developing so I missed that fun

[Flippin222]

My son and I arrived a little after 9:00am. When I went to get the boat ready I quickly found out the crank battery was dead (couldn't remove the toter) . After a quick word with Dartag, we jumped the batteries and were soon on our way (Thanks Steve). With the dead battery, we decided to head up toward Buno Road so the batteries could charge. At the first stop we managed to miss 2 on a rattle trap and caught one around 15" on a spinnerbait. Then we headed north of the buno bridge.

By this time, my son (who is 7) wanted to change his lure. So we sat, ate some lunch, and got him ready to go. By this time we had drifted up to some laydowns along a nothing looking bank. Not wanting to pass them up, I figured what the heck and wouldn't you know it. 3 pitches, 2 fish and both around 3 pounds. My son of course wants to be part of it and tries to skip the spinner bait into the pile (heck of a skip, I must say). It ended up about 5-6 feet back but didn't make it out before getting hung up. So we went in and got it.

We headed over to smaller cut with a nice looking point on it. By dragging a jig. On the second cast we caught our biggest of the day 3 lbs 14 oz. On the very next cast, we hooked and lost our biggest of the day. I would say it was over 5 lbs but everything looks big this time of year, so it was probably more like 4 to 4.5 lbs.
Around the point we went and we managed our last fish for the day a 3.5 lb largemouth out of 18 inches of water.

We headed back and were nearly home when the skies opened up.

It was a wonderful and windy day, not many bites and even fewer caught. But it was fun to be out with my son and we even managed to prove that there are some fish in that there lake.

[Cheetam]

It felt good to be out for the first time this year.  Seeing the water that dirty was a big dissapointment.  We fished shallow, deep, and everywhere in-between.  The best (and most) fish came in 6-7' of water ripping traps (me) and throwing a sk sexy shad crank (steve).  I really wanted to throw some swimbaits (which I did), but the dirty water really kept that from being productive.  Maybe next time.  That storm was pretty crazy.  I haven't had to stay under a bridge in a few years.  At least we had some good company.  I can't wait to see Cameraguy's photos.

[djkimmel]

We caught 4 largemouths after the 1st storm and before the 2nd one when we chickened out for good. All shallow less than 3 foot deep. Biggest was only about 2 1/2. cameraguy also caught our token hammer handle pike.

This time of year... I'm not working too hard so I mostly fish shallow. Have to work the casting kinks out some more yet.

[dartag]

we had so much fun i forgot I had photos.  Cheetam with a couple Kent lake Monsters.  the one seemed a little bigger than the other.   

[stackenem]

Grant and I started in a well known spot throwing lipless cranks not getting any bites in his super spot he took us just around the shore line. Coming up on a wind blown sandy point I hooked up with my best fish of the day a 19 1/2 in SM and right after that around the corner Grant hooked up with a 19 1/4 in SM. So after a couple of high fives we proceeded to work more points and ended up catching around 30 fish for the day. Every thing after the 2 SM were LM everywhere from about 10in to up to around 3 1/2 lbs. All in all we had a pretty good day. Even got off the lake before we got wet.

[jonnymcsavage]

I hitched a ride with SethV and fished the middle of the boat with him and Dan. Morning started off a bit slow but we found a sweet spot and proceeded to nail 21 fish in about an hour. I caught 7 fish total and the biggest was a nice 3 pounder. Also managed to lose one lure to a tree and another to a monster pike. Had an awesome time even though I got sunburned pretty bad. Seth also managed to hook into a pretty big carp right before the storm rolled in and I almost went overboard trying to get the hook out. I hope to see you guys next time on LSC!