Twisted line and cloudy nights

We just got in from a lovely night on Puett. The water is low and extremely cloudy. Deepest part of the lake at this point is about 18 feet. There is a lot of algae, in fact if my depth finder is working right it looks like algae from the bottom to about 9 feet above the bottom. Tonight, the water temp was 68F, so it might be a little warm for them to be terribly active, but sheesh, it was very slow apart from one single bite that yielded nothing. I tried the advice of a friend who said "just drag a crawler harness behind a bottom bouncer, they can't refuse that!" You guys who read this semi-regularly have heard me crack on worm dunkers. I'm not much on live bait outside of catching food you really need, or salt water fishing where you just have too much water to not use some scent, however, the continuous Walleye skunking I've had made me try it. Nothing... trolled the rig slowly around the entire lake. I even tried a crawler on a drop shot rig, nada. Crank baits, spoons, spinners, jerk baits, even my trusty HD Trout. They just weren't biting tonight. We fished from 7 til Midnight. The bats were really awesome and the eerie feeling of being on an empty lake at night was a pleasant change from getting cooked in the sun all day. If you haven't gone night fishing lately, make yourself a thermos of coffee and get out there. Even with a solid skunking, it was a great time and I'll be back for more.

In the past few days I've done a few grocery trips to Vallectio for Kokes. When I troll for them I find that my line gets twisted. So I put more swivels in the rig, but still had some twist. I'm finding out that spinning reels can do this if you happen to reel while your drag is going out. I'm also finding that most swivels you buy are not very swivelley. Some of the cheapo swivels I bought hardy turn. With the help of my buddies on the Western Slope Anglers forum, I found Sampo swivels, which are the Rolls Royce of swivels, but they'll cost ya. About 6 bucks for 2 of them in the smallest size available. Yikes.

I'm looking forward for that downward spiral of water temperature. Ready to see some active fish! I heard a report from the Zebra Mussel inspection guys at Vallecito of an 11 pound Walleye coming out. The guy apparently was out there all night. Crazytalk.