Winter Panfish

Weather conditions have been all over. Yesterday the weather got warmer, but was very windy. There are a somewhat limited number of places to fish here that you don't have to pay, and since my fishing monies are very limited I prefer to fish for free. This little lake is a good choice when the wind is from the south. The entire south side is sheltered and if you choose to fish into the wind, there is a shallow cove that always fishes well with the wind blowing into it (near site 32).

Sanborn Lake

I started off trying my 3wt fly rod, but the strong wind (15+ mph) proved to make it difficult. I was fishing with my friend Kris, and he had brought a extra ultralight that I ended up using most of the day. We had planed to fish for bass, but possibly due to the cold clear water they were not proving easy to catch. We decided instead to fish for sunfish. This proved to be a better option. After trying a slip bobber rig with a crappie jig tipped with worm with no results I switched to a simple hook and split shot arrangement.

Just one split shot (of indeterminate size) was enough for this float to set nicely. A whole night crawler seemed to be the order of the day, with far fewer takes with just a section.

The result was a nice little bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus). 

Kris got in on the action after we moved to the windward side of the lake

The floats could be hard to see at times.

Its a good thing Kris did not hook anything large...he had almost no line on his reel!

Just before heading out I got this bass. Overall it was a good trip, considering that fishing in January can be difficult at times. There were three other people fishing that day but none of them seemed to catch anything while we were there.