Starvation - June 12th

This is out first trip out to Starvation, Rabbit Gulch to be specific, for the year.  Weather was a bit iffy as far as planning went but it proved to be a beautiful day on the water and well worth the drive.

Today was a bit cooler air temps then Monday was but the water at launch was a bit warmer nearing 59.  We never did see it get much over 60 before we got off the water just after noon.

We had seen reports that the perch were not yet in the shallows and that trout, small mouth, and walleye might be better targets to hope for.  So once we got on the water both of us were do a bit more of a mix between jigs near the bottom as well as actively casting around the rocky areas.  Both Jason and I got into the small mouth bass pretty fast near the rock wall where the buoys mark the shallow ridge.

We each had picked up a couple keeper sized small mouth in the range of 13-14" in length along with a good number of eager youngsters that got sent back to grow up a bit... er a lot....  They were still fun to play with.  I managed the one Perch that we got that day about this time too and it measured in at just over 10" long.  After looking around for possible perch or other marks on the finders we both moved off in different directions.  I went across the bay to the far side near the rocks following some comments I had seen in other reports.  Jason started working across but also to the west some toward the back of the bay (kind of)...  I don't think either of us had anything happen at all on the kick across though both of us tried a good number of things.  The finder didn't show much of anything either.

Once I got near the rocks I had a tandem rig of jigs near the bottom and my ultra light took a hard bend and after a very exciting fight I landed my first starvation rainbow for this trip.

Not long after that, and again from a jig near the bottom, I pulled in another nice rainbow.

I worked the area a while longer but the afternoon breeze started to tease us that it might start to blow and I didn't want to be on the wrong side of the lake and have to work against the wind.  So both Jason and I headed back for the rock wall under the buoys.  We got back into the small mouth bass and had some fun with them when I had a different but equally dramatic bend go on my rod.  A nice 17" small mouth finally surfaced after a wonderful tug-o-war (I won if you didn't figure that out...)...

The wind kind of gave up and didn't really ever give us much trouble.  This was much better then the forecast suggested and we were more then happy to have their wrong be in our favor for once.  In the end we had enough fish for a good dinner for both families that evening.  Final, for the keepers, count was 2 rainbow, 4 small mouth bass, 1 perch.