Autumn Bronzebacks

After a weeklong steelhead trip that proved to be quite disappointing, I was back on the water with my wife, Christiane and Darren. I decided to head to Lake Champlain in Mississsquoi Bay. The air temps were slightly above freezing and the water temps were in the mid to upper 40’s. Clouds covered the sky and an occasional break showed sunshine now & then. With the winds almost non-existent I knew it would be difficult to get a good drift going and decided to try casting tubes. Christiane hooked up almost immediately with three fish in a row, but it took Darren a little longer to get into his first smallmouth. Most fish were coming from 12 to 15 feet of water by slowly crawling these offerings. The bite was very difficult to detect at most times as the bass were just picking up the jigs and holding on. If you couldn’t feel the weight difference you wouldn’t even know they were there. We fished only a couple of areas, but concentrated on the deeper rocks, finessing these slow biters. By the end of the day, there were at least 40 bass caught up to almost 4 pounds. Most of these fish were in the 2.5 to 3 pound range but there were plenty over 3 pounds as well. All in all a good day with numbers of these medium sized bronzebacks being caught & released.