Finding Big Smallies

Andre, Jim & his daughter Corrine joined me today on St-Francis for a day of bass fishing. Within the first 5 minutes, Corrine had a nice 4-pound smallie on the end of her rod and soon in the net. Several more big fish were seen but catching them was a different story. This was to be the day of sight seeing huge smallmouth bass. The air temps were 70’s for most of the day with a wind from the N/W at 10 to 20 knots. Water temps were about 67 degrees at best with the exception of the shallower largemouth areas that were a couple of degrees warmer. We continued to fish plenty of areas throughout the day that were boulder strewn and in each and every spot, there were many smallies from 4 pounds to almost 6 pounds seen. Unfortunately, not too many were caught though as we threw senko’s, jigs, crankbaits and soft plastic jerkbaits to try and entice them. Jim managed to lock up on a nice 4 pounder with the crankbait and an even bigger one followed this fish right to the boat before dashing off. After getting frustrated enough seeing all these huge bass, we thought we would try for some shallower largemouth and made a move into the weeds. There were a lot of strikes on plastics and some of these fish were actually landed. Unfortunately they were all on the smaller size and nothing to talk about. One last stop before we were to call it and a few more small fish caught, but again they were small. Plenty of fish were seen today and a number of them were caught, but with the exception of a handful, most were rather small in size. Tough bite for the big ones!!