I had the pleasure of fishing with a father and his son today on a local lake for smallies. Tony was treating his 9 year old Matt to a day of fishing on his birthday. The weather was beautiful once more as clouds & sunshine greeted us for our run up the lake. Air temps began around 70 degrees but ended more like 90 degrees by mid afternoon. It turned out to be a real scorcher with high humidity in the end! The water temps were around the same as yesterday near 78 degrees all over. The fishing began a little slow as we spend almost an hour with only a few bites. Tony did manage to land a real bonus Walleye about 5 pounds on a senko fished almost dead sticked. The bass were definitely there as we saw plenty of big smallmouth just swimming all around. The only way we could get them to take was by practically leaving the bait on the bottom and letting them swim it off. I decided that we were going to try another area and see if we could get into some active fish. We finally got into more aggressive bass as both Tony & his son Matt were seeing action on senko’s. Matt probably lost the best fish of almost 5 pounds when it went airborne and threw the hook. We did manage to catch several, but nothing larger that 3 pounds or so. I decided that there were just too many big fish in the first area and we went back to see if they had changed their mood. Once again there were more seen than caught, but at least we were hooking into a few of the better fish this time. One fish even pulled a rod into the lake as Matt was reeling in another bass up front. I threw a marker out and got the rod back after we finished with the other one. There was definitely a fish on the end of the rod as I brought it back into the boat. Another firedrill once again! It was to be a short day as Tony was to be heading up north and by 2:00 PM we were done. A pretty good day for the time spent on the water with a dozen or more fish caught & released & a bonus walleye too!

I fished with Sammy & Stephan on another lake today and they just slaughtered the bass! What a difference a day makes as over 50 smallies were caught & released and probably the same amount were just lost. For a while it seemed like it was every cast that someone was hooked up! The weather was absolutely spectacular with bright sunny skies and flat calm conditions. Air temps were in the upper 80’s and the water temps reached 78 degrees by the end of the day. Sammy scored the most fish but Stephan held his own in the end. Stephan wasn’t quite as experienced as Sammy and missed a lot more fish before he began landing some of the bigger ones that he hooked into. At one point Sammy went three bass on three different rods as I was just stuck with each of his fish still in the net. I love a good firedrill! Once again, almost all the fish were caught on senko’s with a small percent taken on tubes as well. This is the way fishing should be!

I fished with Andre & Jim today on a local lake for smallies once more. The weather was almost perfect with little to no wind and sunny skies to start. Water temps were around 75 degrees and the air temps climbed up to over 80 degrees by days end. Jim latched into the first smallie of over 4 pounds almost immediately on a spinnerbait and after a couple of jumps, released her unharmed. Even with a stinger hook attached she still managed to get off! It was a little longer before we managed to hook into anything else, but not for lack of trying. There were plenty of quality fish all around us and they were difficult to entice! Both Jim & Andre had chances but only managed to land a handful of the smaller ones in the area. We jumped all over the lake trying to find aggressive fish but only managed to land one here and one there. It seemed like the fish just weren’t in the a feeding mood anywhere. There were a couple of beauties taken up to 5 pounds, but not the quantity I was use to seeing. It took almost till the end of the day again before Jim landed a good one of over 4 pounds. I think the last couple of days had a definite influence on the fishing today. All in all a good day with about 15 or so smallies caught up to 5 pounds.

I began the day on Lake Champlain with Peter, but after an hour or so of fighting the 4 & 5 foot rollers on the lake with only one bass, we opted for a change. We re launched at another ramp in much calmer waters and took our chances in a large bay. The air temps went up to almost 80 degrees but the water temps were down to 72 in most places causing the fish to develop lockjaw. The skies were a mix of sun & cloud and the winds were out of the S at 15 to 25 knots with stronger gusts. Smallies were what Peter was after, but we had to settle for mostly largemouth today as all the better areas were just unfishable. We managed to get into a few good smallies at the end of the day, but all the better fish just got off. A difficult day to say the least with Mother Nature winning another battle. With worse conditions forecasted for the second day, I suggested that Peter travel to my place and we would fish a local lake closer to Montreal. The winds would still be bad, but it would be much better than taking a pounding on Lake Champlain again! He agreed and was into fish almost immediately on Lake St-Francis. The skies were sunny and the winds were from the S/SW at 15 to 25 knots with gusts up to 35 at times. Difficult conditions, but very doable on this lake! Water temps were around 75 degrees and the air temps reached 80 degrees by the end of the day with clouds moving in. Most of the fish were caught on slowly dragged tube jigs with the larger fish coming on senko’s. Plenty of smaller bass in the 2 to 3 pound range were caught but only a few larger fish over 4 pounds fell victim to our offerings. The best smallie of 4.5 pounds came right at the end of the day as Peter finally landed a beauty. A few others were caught shortly after and it was time to call it a day. This was a difficult 2 days of fishing, but we managed to get into fish nevertheless. Hopefully, the next time we will have better weather!

Today, I had the pleasure of fishing with Danny, Sammy & Hassan on a local lake for smallmouth bass. They had caught smallies before, but nothing like what they were about to experience! The weather had dropped the temperatures to a tolerateable 75 degrees and the humidity was all gone. Water temps were still close to the 80 degree mark and the winds created a good chop with 10 to 15 knot blows from the N/W. Sunshine greeted us all day with a little cloud cover late in the afternoon. Within the first two minutes on a demonstration with a tube bait, I had the first fish of almost four pounds hooked and soon after, landed. I always like when the bass cooperate! Sam drew first blood soon after, when he hooked into a smallie of almost 4 pounds that soon came to net. The rest of the day was no different with plenty of quality bass in the three to five pound range being caught with consistancy. There were several down times during the course of the day, but when a fish was hooked during those periods, it was a good one! All three of these guys experienced something that most people dream of. Just about every smallmouth bass that was seen was in the 3 to over five pound range. By the end of the day, everyone had caught several fish between 4 & 5 pounds and there were probably 5 that would have weighed more than five puounds! We had one of those days that just produced large fish and there were over 30 fish caught. When it came time to take the pictures, the livewells looked like a pile of logs in water! I think we had 15 smallies from 4 to 5.5 pounds waiting to be released. This was to be one of the best initiation days for three guys to be hooked on! Ironically, there were just as many fish either missed, or lost as well! What a spectacular day to be on the water!!!