Two Firsts in One Day

I fished with Terry today on a local lake for smallmouth bass. We had a slow start once again with the water being muddied up due to the strong S/W winds blowing ad 15 to 25 knots. Air temps were in the mid 70’s and the water temps were almost 73 degrees in most areas. Our run was through 3 footers to our first spot and as usual, the boat cut through it like butter. I thought I would start Terry out with a spinnerbait due to the fact that he had never caught a smallmouth before. Being from the south, he had caught plenty of bass, just not smallies and was anxious to get into them. Unfortunately, only one bass hit the spinnerbait before I switched him over to Berkley Gulp Alive on a 1/8 oz. jig head. It was then that he started to hook into some of the better smallies and was feeling the strength & power of the mighty bronzeback. Senko’s were also working on some of these fish as well, but the bite was slow during the off times. During the peak times of activity, he managed to get into plenty of quality-sized smallies as well as a few of the medium ones too. We could see some of the larger fish swimming around but they weren’t interested in even the Gulp as we casted in frustration. At one point I think we made a dozen casts and had hits from 10 fish, landing about half. As usual, the better fish managed to get off either when they took to the air or as they neared the boat. There was even a couple of bonus walleye caught on gulp! This was also a first, as Terry had never caught a walleye before today. We hit several areas catching fish just about everywhere before we called it a day around 5:00 P.M. The storms had escaped us to the north and we were lucky to have been able to last as long as we had, fishing all the while. Overall, it was a pretty good day with about 25 fish being landed and plenty of others lost too!!