The Perfect Ending
July 1, 2018
June 30th 2018
The last day for Neville and Tony was an interesting one, to say the least! We weren’t sure if or where we would be able to fish with the winds expected. I just had to wait and see in the morning, for what we were going to do. They were forecasting over 40 knots and at that force, it really doesn’t matter what direction they were from!
I picked them up close to the ramp and headed down to the lake to find it absolutely flat calm. Unbelievable how these weather forecasters can be so wrong, almost all the time! We were going fishing and nothing was going to stop us now!
I decided to fish for smallies to get the day started and almost immediately, Neville was tight to a nice one on the fly. It was going to take the jaws of life to pry that rod from his hands now! He followed it up with a few more a little later and with zero wind, it was easy to see why. He was catching fish the way he preferred and doing a pretty good job tool. Tony was throwing soft plastics and picking up a few fish as well. He even managed to get his very first sturgeon on a jig when it accidentally got fouled hooked.
We had been fishing for a couple of hours and had a bunch of bass landed when I noticed that the weather was about to change. According to the radar we were going to get hit with some sort of a storm and I didn’t want to stay where we were. I immediately went to a safer area to wait it out!
Prefrontal winds kicked up pretty good as we made our way into shallower water. This turned out not to be necessary as we found out soon after. We were all in rain gear and it barely sprinkled in the next 30 minutes. Eventually it passed and so did the wind, so I decided to have them fish the area we were in before leaving. I guess it was the right choice as two nice largemouth were landed. One was the regular way over the weeds but the other was a little bizarre. Neville had failed at skipping a bait under tree branches and actually was in the tree. When he tried to lift it out, a huge largemouth just grabbed the bait and took it down. I told him to keep pressure and used the electric motor to crash into the tree and rescue his catch. When I grabbed the fish I couldn’t believe how big it actually was. It was huge! Let’s just say he got lucky as anything could have happened.
After all the craziness, we headed back out to where we were before the fake storm hit. It was now time for Tony to start catching several nice bass on soft plastics. He must have put four or five decent fish in the net in the next 30 minutes. Neville on the other hand was back on the fly rod and only missed a couple of strikes. We made another move not long after, trying a couple of other places with similar results before relocating again. Although Tony did manage to lose a couple here, we decided to head to the area we fished yesterday in pursuit of more bass.
The winds had increased quite a bit now and were blowing 10 to 20 knots from the SW as we ran. This was going to make fishing a whole lot tougher! Even worse for Neville as he was going to fly fish for the bass!
I wanted to see if the fish were still here and unfortunately managed to hook a couple when searching the area. Tony also caught a few on soft plastics and Neville hooked up twice on a fly. It was definitely tough but apparently doable! We remained here for almost an hour and boated several more decent smallies before leaving. I had hoped to get Tony into some pike & walleye and decided that trolling was the way to go. We packed everything up and headed to where I wanted in 2 & 3 footers once again.
Once we arrived I knew the rough water was going to help and before I could get the last rod in, one of the other reels fired. Neville reeled in a small pike and I reset the rod looking for more. They both hooked up quickly gain with Neville catching a walleye and Tony getting his first northern. These winds had the fish really fired up and I was sure we were going to pound on them good. Unfortunately the wind layed down and we lost the bite too. It was a really strange day for weather, but I decided to stick it out despite the nearly flat conditions.
Several more pike were caught but I was unable to get Tony the walleye he had wanted. We were running out of time as I had to have them back at the dock by 3:00 so that they could get to the airport for their flight. I pulled the lines and called it a day!
There overall fishing for the three days had been great with a variety of species being landed. Smallmouth were the main goal and they boated a bunch! The others were just a bonus as Tony had never caught any of the ones he landed before. I’d have to say that this worked out just great with a little luck from Mother Nature on the final day. What could have ended in disappointment turned out to be the icing on the cake with Neville’s giant largemouth. It was the perfect end to a perfect fishing trip!!
