Dodging The Bullet

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Jeff, Avery & Kevin joined me today for a great day of smallmouth fishing. They were in from Texas and hoping for some Canadian bass! Despite a terrible cab ride in from the city, they still made it for our 7:00 meet time. Apparently their driver didn’t own a GPS and had no clue where he was going with the address they provided. Sounds about right!

I had given them the option to try for sturgeon this morning and they were all for it. Unfortunately after several hours of nothing, we pulled the plug and opted for plan B and the smallies. I would at least get them into plenty of great action doing this!

I had been drop shotting deeper water lately, but today I thought we’d try some soft plastics in slightly shallower water. I knew they would be into fish quickly and on Avery’s first cast, he almost had one. A softer than needed hookset allowed the bass to get off but at least I knew they were here. I decided to give them a demonstration on what they needed to do and immediately slammed a smallie for them to see. They now knew exactly how hard to set the hook!

For the next couple of hours, they all had many chances and managed to get a good number of their fish to come to net. Plenty of great pictures were taken to ensure they had memories of all the first time smallies they had landed. Being from Texas, they hadn’t tangled with the bronzebacks before and didn’t realize just how hard they actually fought. They loved it!

After catching so many fish in this area it was inevitable, someone else moved in to get theirs! A local had seen the action and decided it was alright to just slide in and anchor directly where we were catching all our fish. Absolutely unbelievable! I decided not to get too pissed off and slid out to another area close by where they continued to catch more fish once again. Not long after, another boat also moved in and did the same thing. It really doesn’t pay to fish weekends anymore! Time to leave before we educate these weekend warriors!

I made a distant move and informed the guys that the numbers wouldn’t be the same here but the size would be much bigger. Well it didn’t take long before Kevin had on the big fish of the day. It was definitely larger than anything they had hooked into so far and after a great fight, I netted his catch. A few quick pics later, it was back swimming to be caught again. Avery managed the only other fish from here but we saw some really big ones follow their baits that just wouldn’t take. Time to move again!

They had really wanted to catch one of those dinosaurs this morning so they all agrees to give it another try. I set up in an area and we waited. Although we did manage to have one bite, it turned out to be some sort of sucker and Avery reeled the fish in. A few more hours of drowning baits and we were done. Zero for two on the sturgeon but plenty of bass in between!

The gang had usually gone to Louisiana for their annual trip but had opted to come here this year. Lucky thing as the weather over there right now was quite nasty! They were receiving torrential rains and a hurricane too! I think they made the right decision because they were at least able to fish here in Montreal. They may not have gotten into the sturgeon but the smallie action was absolutely on fire. High numbers of great fish were landed by everyone and who knows how many they missed! Good times were had by all!