On a day when the wind was blowing 10 – 15 mph, Erik fished his top water lures on the East side and I stuck to the South side. Erik pointed his aluminum skiff to the deeper water and I started board fishing at the break.

Nothing was showing for Erik as he trolled the outside so he worked his way back in. He didn’t get any boils on his trusty popper but his fishy sense was going off. He changed to the translucent pencil lure from our previous top water outing to practice retrieving it. Suddenly the lure got sucked down and his light action rod bent over. After a spirited tousle, he landed a foul hooked omilu. It had taken the front hook in the corner of its mouth and the rear hook snagged its chin. No wonder it felt much larger than the 11.5 inches (FL) he measured before tagging and releasing.

He moved to a nearby spot and a pack of omilu rushed his lure.  As he brought in another foul hooked fish, 2 others tried to rip the lure away.  This one was 12 inches and he tagged and released it back to its buddies.  I was impressed when I heard how he was able to fool the omilu which often rush top water lures only to swirl and swim away unhooked.  I have yet to catch an omilu on a top water lure.

Erik had another omilu shake off, then missed something very large that threw a lot of water.  He finished the day at the edge of the murky water with an 7 to 8lb kaku zig zagging behind his lure and kicking up spray but not slicing into his plastic bait.

Meanwhile, nothing showed interest in my new narrow faced top water lure that replaced the raccoon faced lure lost to a kaku the other day. I board fished a channel break that had been previously productive when I used frozen oama.  The wind chopped up the water so I paddled in to fish from shore.  Bait was missing from the usual spots and I didn’t get any boils as I walked the shoreline.  Then I saw small baitfish erupting out of the water and falling back like heavy rain drops.  My first cast near the eruption yielded a very small kaku, maybe 12 inches, too small to tag.   Nothing hit my next few casts so I changed to a few other top water lures I wanted to test, and even tried a Waxwing Baby.  Nothing.  I switched back to the new raccoon faced lure and had two boils as the sun set.  Later, when I washed down the lure I realized the last two fish had actually scratched up the lure but missed the hooks.

I think the narrow profile of this lure looked enough like the baitfish to draw strikes, whereas the other lures I tried were fuller bodied.

And I think Erik has mastered the chubby pencil lure and we need to get video of that monster kaku attacking his lure.