Good morning... Spent the morning yesterday with the birthday boy... my friend turned 95 Saturday and loves to fish Koontz lake... we headed out at 6:30 and were on the lake and fishing by 7:30... my first observation was the great improvement the local associations and the DNR have done to the public ramp area at Koontz. The ramp was redone a few years back; the channel from the launch to the lake was dredged a year or so ago and most recently, someone added a very useful, easily handicap accessible dock that is positioned perfectly for launching and retrieving your boat. Great improvement... Navigating down the short channel to the lake is much easier now that it is dredged and I only saw 3 other boats the entire morning. The birthday boy likes to cast out and slowly drag the bottom with a modified perch rig tipped with either bee moth or red worm. He stops the retrieve once in a while and this often triggers a bite. It is a joy to see him get so excited setting the hook and reeling in either a gill or perch or crappie.
As far as the production, the early morning bite was pretty slow. We tried patiently some old familiar areas but really nothing secret... probably community holes. I would tell you the aerator system that was installed over the ENTIRE lake has really cleaned up the bottom. Dragging this lake in the past often produced decaying vegetation and other debris. This aerator system has greatly reduced this bulk. I am confident this will improve the fishing with time.
As the morning progressed, the breeze stopped and the humidity seemed to increase. The sun was pretty intense and so we decided to stay one more hour and to troll a bit. Trolling made a big difference. It may have provided a little breeze but simply trolling 1/16th oz jigs/twisters in 10' of water produced far more fish than dragging the bottom. We would run into pockets of panfish with an occasional bass. Trolling speed was 1.0 mph with the trusty minn kota I-pilot...
From a production point of view, we have had better days. We had about 20 keepers and I would tell you my friends generation treats every catch as if it was a T-bone steak. Retrieving the boat was easy, with the new pier in place, and the ride back to Valpo was enlightening as the birthday boy shared with me some of his philosophies regarding generosity and ways to reduce family tensions with various topics. I would hope and pray that at some point for each of you, you would have a friend like the birthday boy who has been down the path a little longer than you have been and is welling to share what has been seen and what may lie ahead. There are many dimensions beyond the fish when fishing with a sage like my friend...
