Slow Bites On Magog

I was back on the water again this morning, but this time on Lake Memphremagog. I had driven to the lake to meet Ed & try for smallmouth bass once again. With the fish in their summer patterns, I knew it would be a tough bite on the lake. This time of year has always been difficult with the over abundance of food for them to feed on and today was no different. We began throwing top water baits with no takers so I switched it up and began throwing a jerk-bait for a while. This brought up a few bass and all they did was look but not take. The only thing hitting the lure was perch and they were a pain in the butt. Ed did manage to hook up on a jerk-bait a little later, but the bass was only around 2 pounds and not what I was looking for. The winds were from the north and I knew this wasn’t a good thing with the cool air blowing down the lake. Water temps were almost 73 degrees and should have been prime for the bass, but they weren’t! They weren’t really aggressive at all and I finally switched to a spider jig and slowly worked around the outer edges of the weeds & rocks. This method managed to get strikes and eventually a fish of about 4 pounds. Once I realized what was happening, I rigged another rod for Ed and he began throwing a tube jig. This was slow & methodical, but at least we were hooking up! I ran all over the lake hitting areas that I knew and finally found one in the afternoon that held several fish. It was a rock flat in open water that topped out at 12 feet with deeper water all around. We drifted over it several times when the wind was out and caught many fish from this huge expansive area. Nothing really big, but even a three pounder was welcome today! With the wind blowing we did fine, but when it died, so did the bite. I headed north again and hit many other areas along the way back picking a fish here & there along the way. Ed managed to get into 3 last fish in another area with his biggest bass of the day there on a tube before we called it a day. The second day saw us casting & dragging slower tubes & spider jigs in deeper water areas all day long. After yesterday, I realized that if we were going to catch fish we were going to have to fish slow & deep. I targeted points and outside weed edges with these jigs and we caught fish in almost each place we fished. They weren’t aggressive, but at least some of them were biting today as we jumped all over once more. The best areas were the ones that had the steepest edges and fell into deep water quickly. Pretty much all of the weed beds also held fish, but we had to fish the outside edges to get bit. I tried the same rock flat as yesterday that we had done so well on and didn’t have the same success. I was marking plenty of fish on the bottom, but with the lack of wind today, they didn’t want to move. We caught a few and I almost landed a big one in the 4-pound range but he got off at the boat before I could land him. The rest of the day we bounced around looking for weed patches and fished the outside, picking a fish here & there. It wasn’t fast & furious, but that’s Magog in the summer. Too much food for the fish only makes them difficult to entice into biting. They still look like springtime footballs with fat bellies and seem so full that it’s hard to believe they can be enticed into biting our offerings. All in all a decent 2 days of fishing with the weather being just spectacular!!