Bass in The Wind

After a short time away from the water, I was back again once more on my local lakes. Today I had the pleasure of fishing with 3 brothers from Chicago & Washington for smallmouth bass. We started the day by driving to the lake in an intermittent rain, which seemed to stop upon arrival at the ramp. The air temps got up to over 80 degrees and the water temps were as much as 64 in certain areas. By afternoon, the sun was shining and the winds were howling from the S/W at 20 to 30 knots. This definitely made boat control a difficult task! Jeff drew first blood with a smallie over 3 pounds caught on a senko, but Howard soon followed it up with one slightly larger on a small crank-bait. Jim was having a difficult time with the hook sets, but soon learned patience & restraint was what was needed for these bass. Every spot we fished seemed to be holding some fish, but we had a hard time holding in the wind and soon found ourselves heading away from the main lake spots and into some sheltered areas for the remainder of the afternoon. Plenty of largemouth bass and a few northerns were caught in the last hour of the day and Jim managed to pick a few too! One of his bass was thought to be just a weed by Jim until it began to move. Pretty active weed we thought! By the time it was all over, they had caught close to 20 fish with a mix of northerns, smallies and largemouth up to almost 4 pounds. One of the northerns was probably 8 pounds as well. All in all a great day with the wind being the only problem we had!