Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

Reprinted from the Sioux City Journal.

“When you see Mac’s boat on the water, you take notes on where and how he is fishing. He’s that good.”

I wrote that back in 1977 while endorsing Jim McDonnell’s book, ‘Explosive Fishing Techniques.’

Well, here we are 32 years later, and I’m telling you. Nothing has changed.

Jim called the other night and said, “Let’s go fishing.”

I was ready.

I met Jim at his place in Royal, Iowa, at 9 a.m. and, with his 20-foot Ranger in tow we headed for Big Spirit Lake.

As we eased out of the Templar Park lagoon and into the big lake, Jim said we’d be pulling spinners over the weeds along the west shoreline.

Walleyes were our target, but these weeds hold all kinds of fish, as we were to find out later.

It didn’t take long to put the first walleye in the boat, a keeper just under the 18 to 22-inch slot limit.

Here’s how we were fishing.

We used Northland spinners on both two-hook and three-hook rigs. We used cone sinkers in 1/16, 1/8, and 1/4-ounce sizes placed above a small barrel swivel to which the spinner snell was attached.

Cone sinkers slip through the weeds without fouling. Surprisingly, most of the time the spinner hooks do too. But it is a good idea to keep checking for weeds on the hooks.

Crawlers definitely produced better than leeches so we soon had all rods rigged with worms.

The eighth-ounce sinker produced best so all four rods were soon switched over.

Here’s a tip on using crawlers. Hook them through the head on the front hook and down the body with the second and third hook so the worm will travel straight through the water. Then pinch off the crawler right behind the last hook. This leaves a good scent trail, and insures you will hook up with any panfish that strikes.

The rigs are fished about 30 to 35 feet behind the boat and trolled at 1 to 1.5 miles an hour.

It’s a method Jim has perfected over 42 years of guiding on the Iowa Great Lakes.

“I started out in a 14-foot aluminum boat with a 25 horse motor,” he said. “I charged $25 a day.

“I was a school teacher, and didn’t like painting houses so I thought I’d hang up my shingle in the bait shop and see what happened,” he said.

What happened was this. His business grew. He was the only guide on the lake at the time.

Today he averages about five days a week on the water during the peak seasons. He offers four hour, six hour and eight hour trips and has extra guides available if needed. He also has permanent and portable ice fishing shacks available for rent in the wintertime.

For information on his guide service, call (712) 933-5532 or e-mail: jamac@royaltelco.net

We trolled the same couple hundred yards of weeds the whole time we fished. We caught walleyes up to 22 inches, northerns up to 29 inches, several nice-size crappies, a couple big bluegills, a white bass and a largemouth bass.

The perch, Jim said, had been biting out in the deep water, so we pulled in our spinners and headed for the middle of the lake.

Once out there we soon located a school of perch with our depth finder. We rigged up with jigging spoons and a short dropper hook.

We applied 8 or 10 wrigglers to the hook and dropped them over.

The perch cooperated. In about 20 minutes we had 25 perch in the livewell. That was half of our two-man limit.

“Let’s call it,” I told Jim. “We’ve got enough fish to clean.”

We had done a lot better then either of us expected. The lake was flat calm the whole time and the sun beat down.

“It just goes to show,” Jim said, “that you never know what those fish are going to do. A lot of people wouldn’t go fishing on a day like this.”

Maybe we should have taken notes.