Sak Van Hook is going!

[Vollmer]

We had been fishing the New Town, river, area of Lake Sakakawea, for the last few weeks. It has been great! Lots of fish, and some big fish to boot! Today, however, we decided to try the Van Hook Arm to see if some of the fish had migrated back in. It is somewhat early for that, but we decided to give a go nonetheless.

We started by heading out toward the river area of the arm. It didn't take long for us to start marking a good number of fish. We spent the next few hours pitching jigs while also dragging a couple of rigs. We did catch a couple on the casting setups, but the better producers were the setups we were dragging. One was a simple lindy/minnow, and the other was just a 1/4 oz jig/minnow.

That area became too crowded, with boats, so we decided to chase a shallow bite that we had heard of. We got ourselves setup in the WAY back of a bay and started pitching.

We caught a handful of bigger fish, that we let swim, and kept a one man limit of eaters.
The water temps, throughout the arm, varied, from 52-56 degrees, and up to 60 degrees in some of the bays. I would say this is the very beginning of the traditional "June bite", in Van Hook. Get out there and enjoy it, folks!

 

[Davy Crockett]

Those will fry up nice , They look fat for spawned out . How big is a handful of bigger fish ? I never catch those.

 

[Vollmer]

Those will fry up nice , They look fat for spawned out . How big is a handful of bigger fish ? I never catch those.

They fattened back up, quick. The fish we have been catching have been stuffed to the gills with smelt.

 

[ORCUS DEMENS]

Went out of Pouch point for an hour or two this weekend. There are some big shallows just of shore. Trolled the end of the river, nice marks and bait balls, but no takers. Was just good getting the power boat out of the garage and not thinking about work.