Spring 2009

Lots of ice and ice fishermen on the lake this winter. Unfortunately, I have not been one of them because of some surgery in December. But I have been checking some of their stories as they come in. Sounds like a lot of fish have been taken -- but they say sometimes it required a lot of sorting to get a mess for a meal! However at this time looks like we will have a very long ice fishing season this year -- and maybe I can make it onto the ice yet this winter!

I keep hearing stories that there are a lot of nice crappies to be taken in the deep-water sections of the lake. You need to try several holes to find a school of these fish. These schools are usually suspended about 15 feet down. They usually move towards the weed beds and drop-offs as evening approaches. Minnows and jigs are the key to catching these guys.

This past fall I thought the fishing was a bit slow. As I've said before the lake has very little oxygen below 15 feet so the fish pretty much stay in the upper column of water and bite pretty slow.

Fish stocking this fall -- Because we could not get any pike again in 2008, I did manage to get a lot of walleyes for stocking this fall. In October we stocked over 2400 walleye fingerlings (6-8 inches) in Lake Somerset. Hopefully, walleye fishing should be good in the future. We will try again in the spring to get some pike fingerlings to stock.

Still haven't heard of any smallmouth bass being caught -- keep wondering what happened to them -- let me know if you catch one and its size.

Give me a call at 688-3384 or email me at grausch@comcast.net if you have any comments, stories, pictures, or unidentified fish to discuss.

Until next time -- good luck this coming spring and summer.
George Rausch