Another Road Trip

A road trip was what I had planned for the weekend and headed east to Lake Massawippi to meet up with Alain & Cindy. They had a house on the lake and were looking forward to learning the water a little more. Unfortunately, the same rains that had hit local waters back home had flooded the rivers entering the lake here and it was too a mud pit. The lake had risen about 4 feet and along with the new height, become so muddy & cold that I knew I would be working my butt off just to get a few quality bites. The conditions weren’t the best and added to that were the heavy cloud cover and strong north winds. The upper 30 degree air temps soon felt like low 20’s and we bundled up thick. I really didn’t expect the lake to be in the low 50’s when we hit the first spot and had both Cindy & Alain throwing spinnerbaits over weed beds and along the drop off edges. Alain hooked up pretty quickly on a bass and I could tell that it was quality when it began to fight. With the water so dirty, I never got to see the fish until it was alongside the boat and going crazy. Definitely a five pound class fish full of piss and vinegar! Too bad it broke off just as I was getting ready to slip the net under and threw the bait as well. No pic this time! We covered lots of water today, twice as we broke for lunch at their place and headed back out in the afternoon. I knew the weeds were the place but tried several other areas including deep shoals hoping for a concentration. All we could come up with in the deep were smaller fish under 2 pounds and went back to the weeds again. By the time we called it in the afternoon, there were only a handful of decent fish caught with the largest landed being over five pounds on a tube jig. This fish hit almost as soon as it hit the bottom along the outside edge of the weeds. Right where she should have been but impossible to see with the mud and waves! Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day! Sunday also started out cold as we hit the lake sometime around 9 o’clock praying for warmer temps. Same winds, same conditions and pretty much similar fishing too! Cindy did however nail a decent sized pike on a severe break quickly but that was all she wrote for that area. We picked a few bass here & there but it wasn’t until later in the afternoon when we found a warm pocket of water that hit 55 degrees in weeds that several decent smallies came aboard. As quickly as they hit, they were gone! I moved around plenty trying to relocate them but was never able to lock on to them again and had to try alternative areas of the lake once more. This was proving to be the same all over as we would catch one fish and nay another from each area. Somewhere around 4 o’clock we packed it in and this lake became a memory. It couldn’t have worked out worse as these conditions should have had us on another body of water for sure. Quickly falling water temps coupled with high muddy water and overcast skies with cold winds from the north are a recipe for disaster. I’m actually surprised we were able to even get bit the last two days. This lake is suppose to be phenomenal throughout the fall months right up until freeze up and you would never had known it from these results. Talk about a tough couple of days on the water. I can’t wait to hit the lakes back home again!!