A road trip was what I had planned for the weekend and headed east to Lake Massawippi to meet up with Alain & Cindy. They had a house on the lake and were looking forward to learning the water a little more. Unfortunately, the same rains that had hit local waters back home had flooded the rivers entering the lake here and it was too a mud pit. The lake had risen about 4 feet and along with the new height, become so muddy & cold that I knew I would be working my butt off just to get a few quality bites. The conditions weren’t the best and added to that were the heavy cloud cover and strong north winds. The upper 30 degree air temps soon felt like low 20’s and we bundled up thick. I really didn’t expect the lake to be in the low 50’s when we hit the first spot and had both Cindy & Alain throwing spinnerbaits over weed beds and along the drop off edges. Alain hooked up pretty quickly on a bass and I could tell that it was quality when it began to fight. With the water so dirty, I never got to see the fish until it was alongside the boat and going crazy. Definitely a five pound class fish full of piss and vinegar! Too bad it broke off just as I was getting ready to slip the net under and threw the bait as well. No pic this time! We covered lots of water today, twice as we broke for lunch at their place and headed back out in the afternoon. I knew the weeds were the place but tried several other areas including deep shoals hoping for a concentration. All we could come up with in the deep were smaller fish under 2 pounds and went back to the weeds again. By the time we called it in the afternoon, there were only a handful of decent fish caught with the largest landed being over five pounds on a tube jig. This fish hit almost as soon as it hit the bottom along the outside edge of the weeds. Right where she should have been but impossible to see with the mud and waves! Hopefully tomorrow would be a better day! Sunday also started out cold as we hit the lake sometime around 9 o’clock praying for warmer temps. Same winds, same conditions and pretty much similar fishing too! Cindy did however nail a decent sized pike on a severe break quickly but that was all she wrote for that area. We picked a few bass here & there but it wasn’t until later in the afternoon when we found a warm pocket of water that hit 55 degrees in weeds that several decent smallies came aboard. As quickly as they hit, they were gone! I moved around plenty trying to relocate them but was never able to lock on to them again and had to try alternative areas of the lake once more. This was proving to be the same all over as we would catch one fish and nay another from each area. Somewhere around 4 o’clock we packed it in and this lake became a memory. It couldn’t have worked out worse as these conditions should have had us on another body of water for sure. Quickly falling water temps coupled with high muddy water and overcast skies with cold winds from the north are a recipe for disaster. I’m actually surprised we were able to even get bit the last two days. This lake is suppose to be phenomenal throughout the fall months right up until freeze up and you would never had known it from these results. Talk about a tough couple of days on the water. I can’t wait to hit the lakes back home again!!

Craig & Herm were fishing with me today for their first of several trips scheduled this fall. Craig had a few 6 pounders already from past trips and herm was still looking for his. Would today be the day? We began drifting the deeper breaks with jigs looking for the big ones just moving in and unfortunately only came up with smaller fish. The weather was a little gloomy with heavy cloud cover and a little misty rain when we began and the winds were blowing from the NW making a drift & drag nearly impossible. I decided to try something else and switched them up to blades and moved into the weeds. Well, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this was what we would have to do when Craig hooked up on his first cast. Herm was not thrilled with the baits as he had never had any success throwing them before, but that was all about to change. This was soon to become his favorite new lure when he started slamming fish after fish throughout the day. I didn’t think there was any need to go back to jigs and just covered water with steady hookups. Smallies were violating them constantly and there was a whole lot of groaning going on with each and every hookset! Herm even hooked what I thought might be his 6 pounder only to see that it was a huge northern of almost 40 inches. Definitely his best pike ever and probably around 12 or more pounds. I don’t think they went more than 5 minutes between fish at worst throughout the day making this their best aggressive bass bite day ever. I know Herm was sold with the lure and it’s probably going to take the “Jaws of Life” to pry it away from him from now on! When they left I had to retire the lures, to them as it just wasn’t fair to take them back after the day they had. Let the craziness continue!!

Well, Norm & I were back out again today to see if the water had cleaned up some after the tournament weekend. It had and was back to almost perfect color but still a little higher than usual from the heavy rainfall from last week. We hit similar areas and wouldn’t you know it, landed a lunker in the high 5 pound range. This was surely a fish that we could have used a couple of days earlier but that’s fishing! The air temps were in the upper 50’s and the water temps had fallen slightly and were around 58 degrees but the sun was out and that would hopefully activate the fish. The one thing I noticed though was the presence of a new boat fishing the shallows. As we approached him, he decided to put a ski had on that covered his face completely. Looked like he had something to hide and I don’t think he was robbing a bank! He was obviously an observer from the B1 tournament and another guy that was looking for a free ride. He definitely didn’t know the area because he ran up on rocks several times and had to push himself off with a paddle. I’m sure there will be even more in the next couple of weeks! Throughout the day we managed to get into fish pretty much all over on a variety of different presentations. Although we didn’t really have any competition, our 5 best would have been another 20 pound plus bag once again. Go figure! We stuck it out until almost 5 o’clock and called it a day. It was nice to get out again in a non tournament position and just enjoy the day!!

No rest for me today as I was back on the water with Ross & Jack this morning, searching once more. I had decided to go to another body of water and couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw how high the water was. Looks like another day of finding fish again! Just trying to orient myself along newly developed current breaks was a treat as both of them casted jigs to the murky depths. Along with the high water was the presence of coffee with three creams! This was going to be a challenge to say the least as I began the exploration. Water temps were definitely falling with the color and were showing about 57 degrees at best. Fortunately for us, the sun was out and the air temps reached almost 60 degrees with a light SW wind. As with the last few days I was able to locate fish in shallow and although they caught more in the deep, the largest ones came from less than 3 feet of water. Both Jack & Ross caught their fair share of 2 to 3.5 pound smallies throughout the day, mostly on jigs but it was Ross that would get the lunker. Late in the afternoon he managed to hook into a personal best smallie that soon came to rest in the net, in awe. A quick weight read 5.25 pounds and surpassed his previous best by well over a pound. A few quick picks and back to the mud pit she went. By 4:00 we had seen enough and called it a day. As this trip was a 50th birthday gift from Ross’s wife, Jack got to benefit from it as well. They had caught & released plenty of fish today and the birthday boy had a great present with plenty of memories to last a while. Great day on the water!

Day two saw us up & out early and we arrived with plenty of time to just relax before putting the boat in the water. With our weight from yesterday putting us in the lead, we had to have a guest aboard today in the form of a camera man. I just hoped he wouldn’t be in the way while trying to land fish! The day started with us blasting off first and it wasn’t long before the camera guy realized that the floor of the boat was the place to be as the wind chill numbed his face. We arrived at our location and wasted no time with the fish. I believe it was the second or third cast and a 2.5 pound smallie was swinging into the camera lens with a lift. We managed to get a limit of fish fairly quickly but they weren’t the size I expected and to make matters worse, we were sharing the fish today. It’s always amazing to me how people tend to flock to an area on the second day when they know how well you did the previous day. Oh well that’s tournament fishing in Quebec! We even had one boat that was committed to shadowing us for about two hours. They would go around the outside of us just to get ahead of the path we were on and even when I turned around they would manage to do the same. I just told Norm to block them out and keep fishing as it would only get worse if we acknowledged their presence. Although we bumped up our bag slightly throughout the morning it wasn’t until the camera man was out around noon that we started hitting bigger fish. The sun was warming the areas we casted and the fish became active. At one point, both of us simultaneously hooked up and it was chaos. Norm slammed a decent fish and one second later, I nailed another. When I saw both fish go to the air I realized that mine was quality and hoped Norm would land his first. Not going to happen and I was forced to swing a 4.5 pounder into the boat and net his instantly after. We had just managed to put 8 pounds of bass in the boat in seconds and cull out two fish for about four pounds. We were pumped and wanted more! Unfortunately, the rest of our culls were just ounces as we bumped & grinded our way through the afternoon. We did have a few fish try to attack us right at the boat only to miss the lures completely. I hoped this wouldn’t come back & haunt us at the scales. Time was getting on so we decided to head back to the weigh in not chancing anything. I’ve lost tournaments by 0.05 before and wasn’t going to leave anything to chance today. We made it back in plenty of time and waited quite a while before it was our turn to weigh. As we were in first place going into the second day, we were forced to wait and weigh in last today, building the suspense even more. When the scales came to rest, we had missed the win by 0.56 pounds and finished second. Mere ounces had separated us from Norm’s first win as we came up just short. It was the huge lunker of 6.43 on the first day that secured Jacque & Stephane’s win and they deserved it. We weren’t as fortunate and never really had a kicker to aid in our two days of fishing. We hadn’t dropped any fish that would have made a difference and executed to almost perfection in the tournament. Although we did have to throw out all the pre fishing we had done at least we had adjusted quick enough to be able to be in contention. Norm & I had competed in the largest Quebec tournament and finished second. I know he will cherish the memories along with the trophy for quite some time. He had gotten to compete and see all the good along with some of the bad and now had a better understanding of the tournament scene. I hope he’ll be able to sleep tonight!!