Mike Tyson was famously quoted as saying
“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”
Well, Windamere well and truly punched us in the mouth.
We rocked up with a solid plan. A tried and test plan that yielded some of our best results on record.
With a tackle box filled to the brim with a mortgage worth of sinking soft vibes headlined by the ever-reliable 20g Jackall Transam 95, we would shake and shimmy them along the bottom.
At its peak, this deadly tactic yielded no less than 38 plump yellas in one Spring Day in 2019.
But the yellas weren’t reading from the same script and after a day and a half with only one yella in the tub, we had to wipe the blood from our face and find a new plan.
The main reason our plan wasn’t bearing fruit was the thick layer of green sludge on every tree and the suffocating slime that covered the first 3m-10m of every bank. We were going mad picking the slime off the tiny assist hooks after nearly every cast.
Lucky, my old man Dennis, had a backup plan and started to slow roll a TN60 as soon as it hit the water. What this did was keep the bait above the weed and his trebles free from the action-deadening slime. Simple, yet absolutely deadly, this was the very technique that scored the best haul of Windy yellas way back in 2011.
The final piece of the puzzle was more luck more than good management, as we ran out of fuel from traversing all over the dam looking for fish and had to use the Minn Kota to get us back to the boat ramp.
That meant we fished an uncustomary shallow bank around the corner from the boat ramp, which happened to be thick with shallow-dwelling yellas.
The final day of the trip, with our mid-water shimmering TN’s was like the Windy of old, with countless perch hitting the deck – including two that were sight cast in the shallows. Bloody awesome!
The annual Windy trip was a good reminder that having a plan is fine, but always pack a backup plan or two in case you unexpectedly get smacked in the chops.
Love it, thanks for sharing – the thing about freshwater fishing is it’s always changing!