What a scorcher day on the water! It’s hard to believe that we’re into September and the temps reached 90 degrees today on the lake. I fished with Andre & Jim for smallmouth bass and roasted with the high humidity in the process. The lack of wind didn’t make it easy either as we worked for each & every bite we had. Hats off to the weatherman for a perfect forecast of 10 to 15 knot winds from the south!!! A few of the areas had schooling bass and if you weren’t fast enough to take advantage of the followers, they disappeared right back to the depths they came from. Getting them back wasn’t all that easy either, as they remained down in their sanctuary and didn’t want anything to do with us above. Most of the fish caught today came on tube jigs and senko’s. There were a few bass that either followed or were lost on spinnerbaits and crankbaits, but with the flat water and sunshine, most refused to take aggressive baits. This was definitely a day of finesse fishing! There were a few bite offs from either pike or muskie on tubes and Andre lost a pretty big walleye of around 8 pounds at the boat when the fish just came unpinned. Plenty of areas were tried and most produced some sort of activity, but not what I had expected with the 10 to 15 knot winds and all!! Oh well, I guess they’re only as accurate as their equipment tells them to be! No pics today!

I fished with Alain & Cindy today on Lake St-Louis for smallmouth bass and just crushed the big ones! The weather called for winds from the N/W at 5 to 10 knots but felt more like W/NW at 10 to 20 knots with stronger gusts. The air temps were warm, but not warm enough for a T-Shirt, with the cool northern breeze. With sunshine all day, it allowed us to see all the areas we were casting to very well. This was to be an advantage as both weed and rocky shoals were what we were targeting today. Alain drew first blood with a smallie of 3.5 pounds on his second cast and another one shortly after. Cindy was soon to follow me, with a good one of 3 pounds on a tube immediately after I caught one over 4 on a tube as well. Things were starting to look up as we all were hooking into really good bass. It slowed a bit and I relocated to another area where Cindy began to just crush the fish on tubes. She was definitely getting the hang of these jigs as she hooked several more good ones again. Alain hooked into one on a spinnerbait and brought up a school of big bass while fighting the fish. Cindy took advantage when I told her to throw into the group and missed two others before she hooked up on another 4 pounder. These fish were on fire and so were we as everyone was hooking up regularly! Once it slowed, I decided to try getting out of the wind and ran up the lake to what I thought was a slightly sheltered area only to find out the wind was blowing hard here as well. It didn’t really matter as both Cindy & Alain continued to hook more large smallies on spinnerbaits for the next few hours. Alain even hooked into a rather large Northern Pike that measured well over 40 inches and turned out to be the largest fish of the day. There were a few bass that were in the high fours and maybe might have weighed 5 pounds if we were to have actually put them on the scale. We took a number of pictures and released all the fish back to the lake where they belonged to fight another day. I thought I would give a couple of other areas a try and with limited time left in the day, moved on. A small walleye around 2.5 pounds was caught and another jumbino smallie missed, but that was all for this area. One more spot before we called it a day and a couple of bass up to 3 pounds caught here, before Alain hooked into something big. It turned out to be probably the largest bass of the day and might have gone over 5 pounds. One more quick pic and back to the depths she went unharmed again. By days end, there must have been 25 to 30 bass landed with the majority of them 3.5 pounds or better and many in the 4-pound range caught. There also was at least 10 to 15 others either lost or missed that we saw, making this a possible 50 fish day, in the perfect world! The fall weather is coming and the fishing should only continue to improve in the coming weeks. I will definitely be taking advantage of the spectacular fishing ahead. This was just the start of what’s to come!!

John was in from California for a Caribou hunt in northern Quebec and decided to fish with me for the day. He had done this for the past couple of years and had great success in the past. Unfortunately, this was not to be the case today! We were blessed with beautiful weather, but inactive fish throughout the day. We saw plenty of big fish cruising the areas we hit, but most of them just refused anything. A couple of smaller ones hit the tube jig slowly crawled across the bottom and in one area a nice one committed to the tube. This one was over 5 pounds and 19.5 inched in length. There were many others of equal size that we saw, but they all refused to eat our offerings. In almost each place we fished, we saw some big smallmouth bass and had a tough time getting any of them to eat. John hooked into another big smallie on a senko and this one was around 4.5 pounds. Unfortunately it wasn’t fast & furious and we had to work hard for every fish we got! It was not a typical day on the lake, but the fish were definitely where we were. They just would not cooperate!!

Darrin & I decided that big fish were what we wanted and there was only one lake for this. The last time we were on the lake, he took a bass that probably went close to if not over 6 pounds. He was pumped! The weather began with lots of fog and difficult driving conditions to the lake. The fog also took a while before it lifted and looked like rain clouds, but the fishing began great. In the first 30 minutes there were 3 good fish taken on senko’s and jerkbaits and things were looking up. We covered plenty of water and had a few fish after but realized the fishing was going to be tough. The skies cleared and sunshine made for great viewing, enabling us to actually see some of the fish during the afternoon. With these conditions, senko’s were the only baits we were going to be throwing. Now we were actually hunting instead of fishing as we approached some of the largest bass in shallow water. It felt more like bone fishing in the keys than bass fishing! Several large smallmouth of 4 pounds or more were taken with this technique during the remainder of the afternoon. Darrin missed a really huge bass that looked like it would have been in the 6-pound range but we will never know. He did however manage to land a couple over 5 pounds and several in the high 4’s. It ended with about 15 big smallies and a nice northern of almost 10 pounds by the time we called it a day. These sunny days can be great, but they can also be tough if the fish don’t cooperate. Seeing them is a good thing, but really frustrating if they don’t want to bite. This day was a great one!!

Richard, Ian and I hit another lake today after yesterday’s miserable results. This was not the best start to the day as we had terrible looking skies and heavy cloud cover. The run up the lake was a sooth, windless ride and quite enjoyable. Senko’s were our first choice with these conditions and it didn’t take too long before the first fish was on. Unfortunately, it was on the smaller side and a little disappointing. The next few bass were no different and equally as small until Richard finally got into something of substance. It too hit a senko and soon after a largemouth of almost 5 pounds was in the net. This fish went into the livewell for later photos! A mist and light wind was beginning to fall and unfortunately blowing from the wrong direction so we moved to another area and began throwing spinnerbaits. Pike and an occasional bass were hooked into before we moved on once more. The winds were blowing a little harder as we crossed over the lake in 3-foot waves to get to a sheltered area that we would be able to fish for largemouth. Richard & I were pitching heavy jigs into thick cover and Ian was throwing a soft plastic jerkbait over the open water to try & entice anything that might be holding there. Ian had a nice fish on rather quickly, but it came off before we had a chance to see how big it was. He had a couple more hits on the jerkbait, but only managed to land one of the largemouth bass that went 3.5 pounds at least. We took a couple of pics of the largemouth and released them into the weedy area before we went to see if we could get into some smallies. This was to prove to be a good choice as we began catching some smallies on tubes and senko’s. These fish were in a feeding period and the rest of the day saw consistent action wherever we went. By targeting open patches in heavy weeds we were able to get into probably close to 15 or 20 nice smallmouth before we were done. There was even a walleye of 3.5 pounds taken on a jerkbait and that was going to be dinner. I don’t know if it was the afternoon sunshine or just the fact that the fish were active, but the last 3 or 4 hours of today was spectacular! Once the weather cleared up and the sun came out, it became a different day. We were down to T-Shirts for the rest of the afternoon and catching fish. What could be better! All in all it was a great end to a good day with close to 30 bass landed and many others lost.