I fished Friday for smallmouth again. The day started decent but not what I had expected. I check the weather the night before and they were calling for sun and only a little wind. I found nothing but clouds and 10 mph winds all day! It made for tough sight fishing but after fishing for a while, we were able to find a few pockets of calmer water that held some decent fish.
The setup was the same as my previous trip. I fished a 4″ Gary Yamamoto rigged weedless on a Gamakatsu EWG Worm Hook. I once again chose darker colors (mostly watermelon because that is what I had) on a red hook. I have hook sizes 1/0 to 3/0 and I mostly use the 3/0 because I like the way it matches up with the worm the best. Especially with a 4″ worm.
We fished for about 5 hours and caught 45 bass. The average size was probably only around 14″ but we caught a three over 19″ and 3 pounds. You can see a video of some of the better fish on our YouTube Page. The fishing was fast when it happened but we had a few long stretches where we couldn’t hook a fish even if we wanted to. The wind was moving us along far to fast when we did get bites it was already too late and the fish was gone.
Here’s a few bass from today’s trip
I even hooked into a pickerel… Big head but no body.
We found a good pocket in a shallow bay that was holding some big largemouth for this body of water. We were drifting over a rock bed and found a smallie bed that was holding two fish. We began casting to it without them even budging at the bait. That’s when we noticed a largemouth that dwarfed them by almost two-fold. It was easily a 20″+ fish. Without hesitation we started tossing senko’s, crankbaits, and every other lure in the box without as much as a glance from the bass. The second time through trying to entice this fish we found that there were four others with it; each being progressively larger. The bass were easily all over 4 pounds and I would venture a guess of up to 6…
I’ve had this same scenario play out once before and the ticket was a fly. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my fly rod that day and I haven’t had the chance to get back out there. From what I saw on that day and what I am hearing and seeing at work, the spawn is already on its way out and I would guess those fish have moved out from shore. Hopefully I can find one or two of them this summer as there aren’t many largemouth on this lake but they are usually big if you can find them.
Here is a nice one from last fall:
D & B Ice Adventures 