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Today I fished with Fred once again, on another local lake for big smallies. The weather was a little strange as we encountered rain along the drive and waited it out for 5 minutes at the boat ramp before heading out. Clouds were all around us and the winds were out of the S/W at 10 to 15 knots causing the lake to be a little rough. Air temps were around 62 degrees at the start and 85 degrees by the end of the day. Water temps were down again at 71.5 to 72 degrees at best. Fred began throwing a spinnerbait with all the chop as I thought the fish might be a little more active under these conditions. I tossed a tube at the same time to see which one would work better, but he was the first to hook up. After missing a couple of strikes, Fred was into an honest 3.5-pound smallie and thrilled when it came to the net. He also got hammered by another not long after the first and managed to bring this 4 pounder to the net as well making for his personal best smallie. We moved around a little more picking a fish here & there, but never really found any concentration. Eventually, I offered to switch it up a little and give trolling for muskie a try and he happily agreed. Fred had never landed a muskie and looked foreword to the possibility of getting into one of these toothy creatures. With the rods in the holders and the lures down it took only 3 minutes for the deep line to go off. The reel screamed and I grabbed it from the holder only to feel the last tug and then the vibration of the plug. I hate short strikes or drive by’s! This was to prove to be the only hit we were to have after trolling this area for over an hour and I suggested that we go back to smallmouth for a while now that the sun was out. We fished all over the place with only a few strikes and fish to show for our troubles, but they were decent fish in the 3 to 4 pound range. Fred eventually got into another bruiser on a tube and I netted his second personal best of the day at over 4 pounds. I didn’t weigh the fish but it was 19.5 inches and real fat. Definitely a quality bass by anyone’s standards! We got into a few more a little smaller and thought we would give the lunge another try so off we went to troll once again. This time we had the rods in the water for almost 15 minutes when the shallow line went off and really screamed out plenty of line. I knew it had to be a good one by the amount of drag that went out and immediately grabbed the rod from the holder to give to Fred. Wouldn’t you know it, the damn thing came off once again! This time I felt the power of the headshakes and it wasn’t small. Too bad all I had to feel after that was the lure wobbling. Twice we were ripped off and I wasn’t pleased! We trolled for almost 45 minutes after that without another touch and decided to call it a day. It was a really tough day with almost no cooperation on the part of the fish at all. I fished through the major and never really saw any difference, as the fish remained inactive throughout the entire day. It was definitely a tough bite, but still rewarding by Fred hitting his personal best in bass. Too bad we couldn’t have gotten at least one of the two muskie that made the reels fire as that would have also been a personal best again. Oh well, that’s fishing!!

Guided Fishing!
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