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I'm a sucker for Delavan

7K views 17 replies 14 participants last post by  ohoffm 
#1 ·
When I first started fishing Delavan in 2005 I was quite the rookie. Board member Coyote eventually showed me the ropes for targeting the pike with artificials year round, but initially I was in a stupor for when those big pike seemed to slide off the shallow weeds and disappear. To counter that I did a bunch of sucker fishing which primarily involved finding the weed edge and slowly dragging suckers along it. If I was fortunate enough to run into a heavy pod of panfish along the edge, sometimes multiple rods would go off. One of my best early memories was a triple with my brother in law and nephew. A proud moment for a new boat owner and new guy to the lake.

Eventually I would get into catching the pike different ways. Topwaters, big spinnerbaits, twitch baits, SS Raps, etc. Then the bass fishing took hold and I dropped the sucker fishing completely. It did not help that most of the sucker fishermen were reporting a decline in catches, so it was easy to dismiss it and move on to other techniques.

I recently saw a report on one of the popular fishing sites from a guide claiming to have had a great day sucker fishing out there. Chasing reports is not my thing, but it peeked my interest in giving the technique another try. Essentially it is similar to how I fish big Fall smallies on Geneva, just some bigger baits and beefier tackle.

Monday I set out with 2 dozen suckers to give it a go. I got on the lake almost 2 hours later then I usually would in the summer and I was digging the extra sleep. On my first spot I tried a sharp drop off a point and got 1 mid 20's pike. Next spot a smallie, largie, and a few more pike. I continued to slide down a well known spot and noticed lots of pan fishermen on the inside weeds. Well that was the spot. I ended up putting 3 waypoints down and the 2 dozen suckers were gone in less then 2 hours. It is comical to get a double and be holding one rod between my legs while fighting another fish. To make matters worse I forgot the net. I went back and got 2 dozen more and an hour later my buddy met up with me with another 2 dozen. All the suckers quickly met their demise. At that point my forearm and fingers were cramped up and I was done.

After hearing of the extraordinary pike tales, my 7 year old wanted to go badly. Two days later we arrived back at the lake with 4 dozen suckers. Unfortunately with the heat and the amount of bait in the bucket, many started dying. 2 dozen at a time good, 4 dozen bad, check. I purposely started far off the waypoints to see if we could find another pod of fish farther down the structure. One really nice largemouth was it in about a half hour of prodding. With that I gave in and started sliding over toward my marks. As I got close the screen lit up with suspended bait and big hooks below. Nothing had changed from the day before, except the bite may have been even a little better. The little one made a game of seeing how long it would take to get bit each time after setting lines. Never made it more then 3 minutes. I thought once we got into the dead bait it would slow down, but the fish did not care one bit. At 10 AM we were all out of bait and headed in. For anyone that cares to try best depths were 20-25 feet and my biggest tip would be to look for concentrations of pan fishermen and fish near them. Use the TM to move around slowly because sometimes moving 5 or 10 feet would make all the difference.

I guess the moral of the story is that it is fun to get back sometimes to things we used to enjoy. Soaking a bobber for spring crappie, fishing the river for catfish, using some corn to catch retention pond carp. As we progress in fishing it is easy to get away from some of the simpler methods, but man, it can be fun, especially with kids or grandkids of your own.
 

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#2 ·
Those are some nice pike. I remember years ago I was on a guided Canadian trip and our guide brought us to a deeper area like you described and we sucker fished it with a rig that we now call a drop shot rig. He kept us over the area using the outboard and we reeled in bigger pike than the weedbed snakes we had been catching.

I was impressed especially because he knew where these small concentrations of fish were without the use of electronics.
~JOE~
 
#7 ·
Nice haul!

FishinMatt said:
Unfortunately with the heat and the amount of bait in the bucket, many started dying. 2 dozen at a time good, 4 dozen bad, check.
Something you can try with the dead suckers that I never hear mentioned by freshwater anglers is to de-bone the dead ones. Basically, take a small knife (exacto?) & make a cut along each side of the backbone from just behind the head to almost the end of the body minus the tail. Just as if you were going to fillet the sucker, but instead of seperating the fillets from the carcass, leave them attached & remove the backbone instead.
I do this a lot with many of the baits we use/catch in FL. Its pretty amazing how "alive" a de-boned bait looks swimming thru the water. Always thought to myself it looked like a killer presentation to try with suckers in FW for those that do the sucker thing.
 
#9 ·
Great post Matt! Even with live bait it takes skill to get on those bigger, deep lurking pike.

I agree on getting back to basics from time to time and also don't think we need to make excuses to use live bait. It can be fun and sometimes live bait is the only way to catch the biggest fish.
 
#12 ·
Wow, well done out there Matt, I always love reading reports from the Geneva WI area. How's the thumb healing up? I would personally be a bit apprehensive about grabbing a big pike if I got my hand mauled by one months earlier. You just jumped right back into the game!
 
#13 ·
Islandfisher said:
Wow, well done out there Matt, I always love reading reports from the Geneva WI area. How's the thumb healing up? I would personally be a bit apprehensive about grabbing a big pike if I got my hand mauled by one months earlier. You just jumped right back into the game!
No pain anymore but also not much feeling. It is a bit of a hindrance for dexterity functions but otherwise not too bad. I am a little gun shy but I probably should have been more cautious to begin with.
 
#14 ·
Wow well written report and yes so much fun to bobber fish been doing that a bit for crappie dragging plastics. The simple excitement of a float dunk. Delevan is amazing, so amazing I will probably never fish it because I'd probably skunk that first outing and then I'd feel like a chump LOL.
 
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