Sticking It Out

What miserable day it was today! If it weren’t for the explosive strikes on the surface from largemouth bass, we would have called it a day, early. Alain & Cindy joined me today for another enjoyable day from “Mother Nature” and she was a real treat. I thought that by the report, Monday would be the better of the two with Tuesday calling for the worst of the weather. How wrong they were! From about the time we actually began to launch the boat at 7:00 A.M. until mid afternoon, we were in the clouds and rain. The air temps actually dropped throughout the day starting at 73 degrees and ending at 64. There was virtually no wind at all and the clouds just held over us because of it. To make matters worse, Alain had forgotten the pants to his rain suit and only brought the jacket soaking his lower half in the first 10 minutes. We managed to get into a few smallies up to 4 pounds on soft plastics despite the cold water temps of 66 degrees, down from 72 a few days earlier. Eventually, the winds started to blow from the south and really put a chill in the air. I knew that if we were going to be able to stick it out that I was going to have to find a less windy area and changed to the largemouth as a backup. Here we were at least able to get out of the wind and it really felt a whole lot warmer too. The fish were acting a little strange as they were blowing up on the frogs and not getting hooked. At first I thought it was because Alain was setting too soon, but soon realized that they were just not taking the baits well. There were a few smaller fish caught up to 3 pounds, but there was also at least 10 or 12 bigger fish that just never made it to the boat. Cindy had the closest fish as I almost got the net in time for the 4 pounder that just came off before I was able to take a shot. I must admit the action was great, but the results sucked! We eventually decided to change up once more to the smallies in hopes of a few more fish to add to the catch list. Tiny crankbaits were going to be the downfall this time as Alain was soon to find out. Cindy threw a spinnerbait and managed to hook into a few of the smaller ones in the 2.5 pound range but Alain had a couple of real bruisers on that were in the 4 to 5 pound bracket and the tiny hooks were no match for the power of the smallmouth. By 5 o’clock we had seen enough and decided to call it a day. Unfortunately, there weren’t any pics to be had today, but that’s only because we were too miserable to hold them in the rain! Better days to come!!!