More Quality

After hearing about yesterday, Norm just had to get back on the water for more giant smallies today. As usual, he brought his faithful companion Buddha along for the ride. We hit the water shortly after 8:00 and tried the shallows looking for migrating schools of smallmouth. The weather was dead calm with bright sunshine and temps of low 50’s. Although we were expecting some wind, it was to be from the east and not the best for a drift. As with yesterday, we ran aggressive reaction baits for well over an hour or so in hopes of getting some quick bites. Once again it was a disappointing ordeal that soon had us scrambling. I wasn’t going to waste any more time today so we headed straight out to the deep water once more in hopes of a repeat of yesterday. Although the wind wasn’t in our favor, I had to try! It took a little while to figure out which way I had to position the boat in the current to be able to move along at the right speed, but I got it. Once we lined up correctly, the game was on! I think the first one was around 5.25 pounds when it finally showed from the depths and Norm was all smiles. All we had to do was repeat the right depth drift and the fish would take our baits. We tried all different types and literally caught on everything from straight tailed worms to Carolina rigged lizards. There weren’t any real better baits than the other and by changing presentations we were able to get a few fish from each drift. I didn’t want to over pressure the area so we changed locations and were able to repeat this everywhere we went. It had taken Norm many a trip last fall to break 5 pounds and he had already accomplished this more times today in just a few hours. He even broke his personal best with one fish just under 6 pounds that weighed in at 5.86 on the scale! Once we had enough of the deep bite, we ventured back into the shallows in hopes of finding some easy fish and started throwing reaction baits again. Although we did catch some fish, they were definitely smaller at 3 pounds max. We mixed it up several times during the day from deep to shallow and always came up a little short when we moved in. The deep bite with the bright sun was the way to go and we knew that by covering water we would have action, but not quality. By the time the day was done we had the best of both worlds with the numbers and the size. By shifting all over the lake we were able to have our cake and eat it too! The best part of the day was the pumpkin that Norm caught that went almost 6 pounds. Unfortunately he now has another goal to target and probably won’t sleep until he accomplishes it. It’s gonna be a long fall!!!