Another Weekend Double
June 21, 2021
Today was a totally different one than yesterday with the winds laying down. Although they were still blowing at the start, it was completely doable and we headed out in pursuit of the smallies.
Rick & Dan were with me this morning but were only fishing half the day. An afternoon booking would have me turning around with the second group after dropping them at 11:30. We had several hours to “get er done”!
I wanted to go back to where we had crushed the bass on the first day, but to my surprise there were 4 or 5 boats already fishing the area. Looks like a tournament was on today! In fact there were plenty of boats all around causing me to find a place that we could fish. The area we chose had a boat blazing through with fast moving baits and we were able to fish nearby and wait for him to leave. By slowing down both Rick & Dan managed to boat several nice bass before I decided to make a move.
I headed offshore to a spot that I hadn’t hit yet this season as bass fishing only opened a couple of days before. Too bad many others don’t abide by the rules too! We actually remained here for the rest of their trip because the fish were cooperating. By fishing the transition, they were able to land many quality smallies and they even had a double header too! I had planned on making another move but I just couldn’t pull myself away from here. As long as they were catching, we weren’t going anywhere!
The remainder of the morning saw us making slight adjustments in presentations and the fish just kept coming. We finally called it around 11:15 after one final fish and headed back to the docks. I was meeting the next group by 11:30 and these guys had a long drive back home!
The three days they spent fishing may not have been what I had expected, but adjusting to the water temps made it a successful trip. Unfortunately Mother Nature had a nasty streak in her on the second day but we salvaged it by going green! Largies are always a good backup plan!
Mark & his father Dave were with me this afternoon and I hoped to get them into action like this morning. I would be changing it up a bit by starting out with a troll and set the 3 lines in as soon as we arrived on the spot. Too bad we trolled for almost an hour with only one pike to show for our efforts!
Not wanting to waste any more time, I changed the trolling gear for bass rods and headed to another area to cast. Within minutes after instructing Mark on what to do, he had his first bass of the day. In his life he had landed maybe 3 fish and I told him that that would all change today!
They fished through this first spot and managed a few more with several missed ones as well before we made another adjustment. The next place was a little tricky as I had to figure out where the fish were due to the extremely low water. Where I usually fished was almost dry!
By moving around a bit I was able to see that the fish had dropped into a nearby deep area and once we found it, it was game on! For the next couple of hours there were many fish landed as well as missed. I would have liked to take more pics of the larger ones, but most were hooked deeply and I didn’t want to stress them out too much, after removing the hooks! They were getting the bites but not reacting in time to get a proper hook set.
Eventually the action slowed in this area and I made one final move to another spot to finish off the day. We spent the last hour here with plenty more fish coming aboard, before we were done.
Mark may not have caught a lot of fish in his life but today that all changed. He learned how to cast properly and boated a good number of bass. In fact he never imagined that he could catch that many fish in a half day after having landed only 3 fish in his life! It was definitely a challenge today but it all worked out in the end!
