Headed out to Bamber Lake to let the boys do some fishing. Always a hot place for pickerel action. Got our bait and planned on grabbing some sandwiches for dinner and eating at the lake. Setup and fishing by 6:30 PM with some wicked southeast wind. We were floating shiners with bobbers. First cast and my youngest(2 years old) is hooked up and brought the fish in...a small pickerel, but one big fight on an Ugly Stik Jr. Do our pic and release and get my oldest casted out. The wind just pushed the bait right back in and made a mess with the slack line that they haven't mastered watching yet. My oldest(3 years old) got 2 good size pickerel, but they both came unbottoned right at the shore while waiting for me to grab them
. It didn't matter he was happy and he saw them, so he caught his fish too. Had a few more hits, but they kept spitting the bait.
Not as many fish as we normally get. I don't know what the reason was...haven't fished Bamber yet this year so I can only compare it to last year. Couple factors could have been the cause, but I think it was the bait. Normally we use golden shiners or killies, but the shiners yesterday were Emerald Shiners. Seemed like the fish didn't like them. I didn't check them in the store and didn't have Plan B with me
. It didn't help that someone shut off the aerator and I didn't realize it until almost too late
.
Either way, it was a good trip. We fished for about 2 hours and then the kids had enough. Tried for a pic of the boys with their rods in front of the lake, but we went into meltdown mode as it was past bedtime.
