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Christmas
every day of the year on Simonton Lake. By Javier Serna Jim Friend will tell
you it’s Christmas every day of the year on Simonton Lake. At least
for walleye fishermen. That’s because the Simonton Lake Conservation
Club, of which friend is president, has been sinking Christmas trees
into the lake at the end of December for years. Friend, president of the
club, targets the brush piles often when hunting Simonton Lake walleye.
Because the lake has little natural cover, the piles are unnaturally the
lake’s best habitat. The habitat attracts small minnows, which attract
larger fish looking for a meal -- larger fish like walleye. And Friend
knows how much walleye like minnows on Simonton. He’s into the habit
of using a minnow trap on the end of his pier. He just seems to catch
more walleye using native Simonton Lake minnows. "When you can get
your own minnows out of the same lake, those are the best kind,"
Friend said before embarking for a walleye outing on a recent evening.
He also took a bucket of bait shop minnows in case he ran out of
Simonton’s choicer bait.
Every year the lake
gets a shot of about 5,000 walleye, which Friend’s club finances.
During some spring months, Friend has boated more than 40 walleye. But
even now, in the summer, Friend said Simonton Lake walleye can be had.
He prefers the evening, just before the sun goes down but said the
mornings can be productive, too. “I usually won’t go out there until
the sun is out of the picture,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll head out
after the 9 o’clock news.” Regardless, he said, targeting the brush
piles is important because it’s those very areas that the walleye head
to during peak feeding times. Friend turned on his depth finder, which
gave a reading of about 18 feet of water. "We're a little too deep
for our structures," said Friend, slowly motoring forward with a
watchful eye for changes on the lake’s bottom. "There we are.”
Suddenly we were sitting in about 13 to 15 feet of water and the graph
showed the bottom to be lined with what might be taken for garbage. But
one man’s garbage is another man’s fish attractor. In fact, over the
years, the club has lined many a spot with the trees, drug out with
snowmobiles before the ice thaws and anchored with cinder blocks.
"Everyone accuses me of putting them right behind my house,"
Friend joked, his house in view. But the pile we floated over was one of
the smaller ones with about 25 trees and 45-feet wide. There was another
pile, Friend said, made of about 250 trees. Most of the trees are in 13
to 15 feet of water, next to deeper and shallower water on each side --
information that should give those equipped with a boat and depthfinder
the ability to find a pile. “They’re
not too hard to find,” said Friend, speaking to Simonton’s size at
282 acres. A glance at a contour lake map should narrow things down. The
larger pile is on the north side of Simonton’s west basin, just along
the breakline. Friend lowered his pontoon's electric anchors at the flip
of a switch and plopped a minnow into the water on the south end of
Simonton‘s west basin. He used a slip bobber to get the bait down
about 9 feet, keeping the minnow suspended right on top of the brush.
The technique is tops for the lake, likely to yield crappie and bass as
well, which also prowl the piles for meals. Later, the lake yielded a
Christmas present of its own when a walleye grabbed my lake minnow,
making my bobber disappear just before dark.
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