5-27-2012 Lake Shelbyville, IL

[Goosepond Monster]

My brother, father-in-law and myself made the trip over to Lake Shelbyville in hopes of catching some walleye. I had booked a trip with www.lakeshelbyvilleguide.com/ and had high hopes for catching my first walleye as well as putting some in the cooler to take home. We were on the water a little after 7:00 and Steve put us on some white bass. Those were a lot of fun to catch. After we put a few of those in the cooler, we moved to a different spot to catch some crappie. We wound up hitting a few different spots for crappie and put our four man limit in the cooler. After that we fished for some walleye, with little luck. I did catch one dinky walleye while we were fishing for crappie and my f-i-l caught a dinky sauger...that the guide insisted was a walleye. We had fun and we caught a lot of fish, but at the end of the day I felt like the trip was a bust. I went over there to catch some walleye, but I gathered that Steve is more about the crappie. I like catching crappie and I like eating crappie, but I can do that at home. I just felt he didn't work very hard on getting us on some walleye. The first spot we fished for crappie there was another boat trolling and we saw him pull in a nice, keeper walleye. He was using crawlers, but when Steve had us fishing for walleye we were using the candy striper baits he makes. I don't know if he even had any crawlers on the boat. He did say we were a little early for the good walleye bite and that the water was a little low, but I think had we spent the time on walleye that we spent on crappie that we would have taken some home.

My brother with a nice crappie...



This is the biggest crappie I have caught so far...



My father-in-law and Steve with a couple of nice crappie...



Steve said this was a walleye, but I think it was a sauger...



My brother isn't much of a photographer, but here is my first walleye...