Feeling The Pain
July 14, 2007
Sam, Stephan and Anthony were to fish with me today on a nearby lake for more bass action. We had a rather cold night of barely 50 degrees and I hoped this hadn’t affected the smallies too bad for where we were to fish. The water temps had dropped a few degrees and were now 66.5 with an air temp of mid 50’s. It felt more like the fall than summer! The skies were clear & bright sunshine helped, but the cool NW wind made it feel colder than it actually was. Several places were tried for smallmouth in the morning, but only a few large fish were seen and nothing big was caught. The only big fish hooked was Sam when Anthony buried a hook in his ear casting a tiny crankbait. This was the first time this season that I was forced to do surgery on someone and all went well as I removed his newly acquired earring. They all quickly realized how lucky he was and how much worse it could have been that close to the eye and were a little more careful when casting afterwards. Accidents happen, but everyone really needs to be aware while fishing with other people around them and be extremely cautious while casting! After fishing several of the better areas for smallies and coming up with only a few northern pike, I thought I would bring the guys shallow and try for largemouth instead. The sun had been up for a while and we were officially in a major with the water in this area above 73 degrees. I knew they would be on and it didn’t take long before everyone was hooking up with bass. Anthony managed to get the largest one when he locked up with a 4-pounder inches from the shore and had to muscle it out of the weeds to the boat. There were probably around 30 or more largemouth taken in the next few hours and the action was definitely better than the 1st half of the day. We hit a few more spots afterwards with minimal success and a few smallies and then called it a day. We had to make adjustments during the day, but made the best of a not so perfect situation with all the cold water we were dealt. Fortunately, the largemouth cooperated!!