BFT Willard Bay Floatilla on Friday the 13th (With Video)

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Friday the 13th was looking good...weatherwise...even after the recent cold front storms.  So several of us ganged up to see if we could molest some of Willard's denizens.  Obifish showed up early to raid my flig stash and then blasted off to the south with a boatload of family.  Doitall launched just before I did...as did the jjannie crew.  Air temp was a brisk 41...warming to only 60 by noonish.  And the water temp was 57 in the harbor and 58 outside...only warming to a bit over 59 in the calm and sunny but cool conditions.

I thought it was gonna be a bananner day for perch...after catching a nice 13 incher on my first drop outside the marina.  But nooooooo.  That was my first, last and only perch.  Lost a couple of others during the day but didn't see a lot of perchy marks on TV either.


Continued to work the usually productive spots near the marina for awhile...along with J&J and Doitall.  I managed to pick up a couple of small cats, but no more perch.  Nothing going on for the other two BFT boaters so they both wandered off in different directions.  I let them chime in with their own reports if they choose to do so.
 

I was trying some new fligs and some new rigs.  From past experience and current intel I figured that fishing would be better with small, low and slow.  So I rigged with some new tailless fligs and some micro whirlies...in my fave Willard colors...chartreuse, pink tiger and orange tiger.  I caught the first and only perch on a chartreuse micro whirly with a piece of worm...and one catfish later on the chartreuse tailless flig with worm.  But those were the only fish on chartreuse.


I was actually using a new "high-low" tandem rig...fishing a tailless flig only a few inches off the bottom, a sliding sinker on a 24" leader above the swivel connecting the tailless flig and a micro whirly flig coming off a swivel at the top of the sliding sinker leader.  I caught cats on both the bottom fligs and the whirlies...but I probably caught the most on a pink tiger tailless flig...sweetened with chub minnow.
 

Forgot to mention, I was also playing with some new vertical jigging lures.  Only fished them briefly since I was not seeing any concentrations of perch upon which to ply them.  But while briefly dunking a pink perch "Perch Tear" I had a silly catfish munch it.


Actually, I didn't do too badly for Friday the 13'th.  I only caught  1 perch but got maybe 9 or 10 everlovin' kitties.  I kept six and released some smaller ones.


It really was a lovely day...at least for me.  I don't think my fellow north marina area reprobates did as well.  They can chime in if they want.  I'm sure that Obi will have a decent report.  He usually manages to scratch out a few.  One of the things that amazed me was the jumble of concrete barriers that had been placed along the parking lot road above the lake to the south of the marina entrance.  They were all jumbled.  I had heard there were some scary big waves hitting them from a windstorm a few weeks ago but had not seen the result until this trip.