Mother Nature Loses

Ed & Jim joined me today on a local lake in hopes of catching a few quality smallmouth bass. The weather definitely wasn’t in our favour, as we left the dock in dark skies and heavy winds. It was blowing at 10 to 15 knots and expected to reach 25 sometime during the day. There were showers & thunderstorms also in the forecast limiting our chances at a great day, but hopes were high nevertheless! By the time we reached our first spot, it wasn’t looking too good as light rain began to fall & the winds were blowing harder from the S making casting difficult. Ed began by throwing a spinnerbait & Jim threw a senko hoping for a quick bite but Mother Nature had other ideas in mind. It was difficult to control the line & direction let alone feel anything bite, but we pressed on looking for that first hit. The senko drew the first strike & Ed hooked up on a decent fish when he put the spinner bait down. This began a series of good fish before Ed decided to pull out the 5-weight fly rod hoping to hook a few smallies on a clouser. It didn’t take too long after I positioned the boat in order to ensure everyone’s safety and casting before he was locked up. They were both hooking into good fish now and well on their way to an excellent day with three to four pound fish on a regular basis. A few of these bruisers exceeded 4 pounds & pushed the 4.5-pound range showing both Jim & Ed the quality & potential of this lake. During all these fish being caught we were hammered several times with weather changes from bad to worse, but still fished through the heavy downpours. Fish do bite in the rain! Around 3:00 P.M. we thought the approaching storm might make us run back to the dock when we were hit with a monsoon like rain that turned on the bilge pump many, many times. Luckily for us, 20 minutes later it changed to only a light rain as we continued to fish. There were wind shifts from the S to S/W to W to W/NW that eventually went back to the S/W during the day, keeping me adjusting boat direction constantly. Many more fish were hooked & landed during all of this before we finally called it quits at 4:30 P.M. There was another storm approaching and we had seen all the rain we could handle for one day! Over all, despite all this misery, they must have landed at least 30 or more smallies with the bulk of them being real quality fish. I believe we finally won one against “Mother Nature” & overcame all that she had to dish out today!