Today I was on another nearby lake for smallies with Lee. He had brought his wife to Montreal for their anniversary and decided that he would fish for a couple of days while they were here. She tagged along with us while on the water, but never really fished. Lee was an experienced bass fisherman & tournament angler but for largemouth. He was looking for a wall hanger of a smallmouth and hoped to have a reproduction made from something above 5 pounds. The conditions weren’t exactly perfect for what I wanted to do, but I figured it could be done. With no wind, flat water and overcast skies, it was going to be slow fishing. By fishing with senko’s and tubes, we were able to pick up fish every once in a while on almost every area we went to. Without a doubt, the senko’s were what worked the best as most of the fish were caught with these baits. Lee did however manage to catch a really long and skinny bass on a tube that went 20 inches. He also managed to get a few on spinnerbaits that almost ripped the rod out of his hands when they hit. By the end of the day, there were about 15 to 20 bass caught up to 4 pounds, but nothing in the mountable size range today. As I told him, the wind and sunshine really help in getting these big bronze beauties and we had the exact opposite today. Hopefully, tomorrow would be better!!

I was back on Memphremagog again today, but this time with Alain, Claude & his son Alex. With a serious fog delaying us from running far, I just ran to a close by waypoint and we began to fish. The air temps were in the mid 40’s and the water temps were barely 70 degrees with very limited visibility. Claude scored the first fish on a jerk-bait, but unfortunately it was a perch. Alain managed to get into a nice smallie on a top-water bait and it was a three pounder. I had several perch as well and even doubled up on a jerk-bait on one of my casts with two of them. Finally, I got into a 3.5-pound bass and managed to land it a little while later. I even found an area that I had been looking for the week before and this time did it in the fog. Unfortunately, we didn’t catch anything on it though and went back to the off shore weed beds where the fish were. It took about an hour and a half before the fog lifted and we were finally able to move down the lake to other areas and fish. Based on the previous two times on the lake the week before, I knew we would have to fish slowly with jigs if we wanted to be successful. I concentrated on the outside of weeds in slightly deeper water and we picked a fish here & there throughout the day, but nothing big. The weather actually turned out to be a beautiful day with air temps reaching almost 80 degrees and sunshine for the remainder of the day. With no winds, we were able to cover lots of water comfortably, but not too effectively. The fall isn’t here yet and the fish are still in a summer pattern on the lake but there is still too much food for them to eat. With all the perch around the weeds, the bass look more like springtime spawners rather than summertime feeders. With the day getting on a little, I decided to run back to the weeds where we began to see if we could get into a few more before we called it. I demonstrated a cast to Alex with a spinnerbait and locked up on a nice fish of over 3 pounds immediately. I really thought we were going to get them after that, but was disappointed to only see perch afterwards. Alex caught another small bass and we finally called it a day. There were plenty of fish caught today on a variety of lures, but most of them were on the smaller side. All in al it was a really nice day to be on the water and we all had a great day!!

After a not so great day on the water yesterday due to even stronger N/W winds, I was glad to see the lake calm down. We still had the N/W winds, but they weren’t any stronger than 5 to 10 knots at the worst. Most of the morning, there was only a ripple on the water and this made it easy for both my wife Christiane and myself to cast. Skies were sunny with intermittent clouds shadowing the water we fished The air temps reached 70 degrees late in the afternoon and the best water temps we found were on the windblown side of the lake at 72 degrees. I thought we would continue to throw jerk-baits and Christiane hooked up not long after we started. I was sure she had a smallie and that it was a biggun! Line peeled from the reel as I chased the fish down with the electric motor trying to get a closer look at what she was into. When I caught a glimpse of this thing I saw what looked like a 7 or 8-pound smallmouth bass, but eventually realized that it was only a freshwater drum. This was the first time one of these drum ever attacked a hard bait like the jerk-bait, but it was the largest one too, of almost 12 pounds. Shortly after this fish was released, I hooked into a smallie of 4.5 pounds and Christiane had a couple of others slightly smaller on tubes as well. We moved around a bit looking for other large bass and Christiane got into another biggun. It definitely went over 5 pounds and into the livewell for pics later. The rest of the day we moved around hooking into a fish here and there and eventually hit one area where we had several fish on, only landing about half of them. I think with the warmer weather on the way, it will only get better in the days to come. The shallows will once again heat up causing everything to become active once more and 25 to 50 fish days will return. We didn’t crush them today, but we did have a great time with about a dozen or so fish landed and several others seen, or missed. All in all a good day and nobody got hurt!

Darrin & I headed to St-Francis for a day of smallmouth bass fishing today in tremendous winds. The waves were three footers before eight o’clock and we knew they were going to get even worse. With winds out of the S/W at 15 to 25 knots and stronger gusts, they made their way into the 4 & 5-foot class before noon. Fortunately, the sunshine made it feel comfortable and with the Ranger, boat control was a breeze! We were throwing jerk-baits and tubes pretty much the entire day in these winds and fended pretty well. Darrin hooked into a few smaller bass up to 3 pounds before he finally got into a real giant of a smallie that brought up abut 5 or 6 of it’s friends during the battle. I don’t think either of us actually realized just how big this bass really was until it was finally in the net. She was 21.5 inches long and had to run close to if not over 6 pounds! I thought I would livewell her and take some pics later, so that we could continue fishing. Almost immediately, Darrin was into another big fish and eventually brought a smallie over 4.5 pounds to the livewell once again. I followed up with another bass close to 5 pounds on a tube shortly after and it was starting to look like we were going to have a big fish day. These winds were a bit of a pain to fish in, but thankfully the boat made it really comfortable and easy to control a decent drift through the area we were fishing. The entire day was like this with pretty much big fish coming from wherever we fished. We tried a few other areas and Darrin either got into big smallies or had them follow the jerkbait right up to the boat. I stayed on the tube and occasionally switched up to either a spider grub or another jerkbait, depending on the area we were in. I am sure that if the winds weren’t quite as strong as they were, we might have caught even more of these giants. There were probably close to 25 bass landed and plenty of others seen and lost! All in all it was a great day with a limited amount of action, but really quality results!

This morning I fished with Mark & his son Daniel for a half day on Lake St-Louis. I was actually glad to be on the water for just a half day due to the weather forecast scheduled for this afternoon. It was suppose to be thundershowers and heavy winds up to 30 knots from the S/W and I didn’t want to experience that again. We began by making a long run up the lake to our first spot and Mark lost a good fish on a spinnerbait when she went airborne. Moments later, Daniel also lost one that should have been well hooked on the third or fourth jump. These two fish were Kodak worthy, should they have come aboard! We did manage to land three others and a pike before we relocated due to slower than expected action. Nothing on the second area and 5 missed strikes on the third made us move on once more to another location. This time it produced two nice smallies over 3 pounds on senko’s, a couple of walleye on tubes and another northern around 6 pounds as well. Being pressed for time and watching the weather move in, I decided to try one more area in hopes of some action. Unfortunately, only two smaller bass were taken on a spider grub and we had to leave when the sky looked too bad to hang around. Overall the day had a possible 18 chances at fish and over half of them were landed. The weather really had a lot to do with the outcome as we ran in, in pretty heavy rain and dark skies. Half days are always difficult unless the conditions are just prefect. All in all a pretty good half day, nevertheless!!