Only Big Bites

Well after finally getting the brakes fixed yesterday, I went back to the lake with Norm & his buddy Buddha today for more giant smallies. The weather took a turn for the worse and a cold front moved in along with a N/E wind blowing 10 to 20 knots. This really had me making adjustments to the type of presentations we were going to use in order to get bit. I knew that the morning bite was going to be a little more difficult so we slowed down in the areas that held fish to try & entice them to take our offerings. Although the sunshine felt nice the cool morning chill had us bundled up and this definitely felt more like the fall rather than the end of summer. Water temps had dropped over three degrees since we were here a couple of days earlier and I wasn’t sure what to expect as we hit our first area. It took about 15 minutes before we had any contact with the bass and I could tell by their lethargic nature that they were inactive. The first one just came up and pushed the lure instead of hitting it and disappeared right back to the bottom immediately after. The second & third one also did the same thing and although I got to see them clearly, they never really hit. I had to slow down more and even this wasn’t working like I had planned. I thought I would move out deeper to see if some of those fish were willing to eat before I relocated completely to another part of the lake. Unfortunately, the same thing happened and we were forced to move. The motor was acting strange and I didn’t want to take a chance running too far so I kind of fanned out and never really went more than a couple of miles. Eventually, I had to do something and ran in and had it fixed by a local marina. Plugs and filters were the problem and now it runs better than it ever did! Back out and a little later in the morning, Norm finally broke the ice with a solid 5.5 pound smallie and we were pumped! I knew that once the sun began to warm the water the bass would start to get active and it was happening. The next fish to come aboard was slightly under 5 pounds and just as fat as the first one making me believe that we were on a school of pigs. This was to be the last bite for the area and after about an hour of fishing, we made a long run to another place in hopes of more hogs. On Norm’s second cast he locked up and landed a fish well over 4 pounds adding yet another beast to the already good sac we had. Three fish and almost 15 pounds isn’t too bad! We missed a couple of others and one of them was pushing the 6 pound mark by the looks of it as it just turned and swam away. We hit another area again and it finally began to look like we were onto something as Norm put one more high 4 in the boat keeping our average alive. A few more bigguns also came from this place and now we were on a stringer that was just huge. I wasn’t sure what was in store for us as we went to another location, but I was pretty sure it would be the same caliber as the others. A confirmation was had almost immediately as were locked up on our first casts with a double. Both of them were pumpkins with one going over 5 pounds once again. We decided to move around the area just looking for more of these slabs and although we really didn’t catch too many, they were all quality. By the time it was all said and done we probably had a stringer of close to 25 pounds. We weren’t after the numbers today and succeeded by catching only big fish. Despite the not so perfect conditions and the N/E winds we came out on top with an unbelievable big fish day! I can’t wait to get back out and see if history repeats itself by catching even more of those big brown bass!!