A Change Up

Craig & Steve were with me for a couple of days, looking for some early fall smallies. They weren’t use to this warm weather as a late October or November cold was their normal time to fish. With water temps near 65 degrees and today’s high expected to reach into the mid 70’s, I didn’t know what to expect. I stopped in an area that I thought might be holding some big fish but soon found out different as it was void. We jumped around for a few hours checking several other places before pulling the plug and making a long run. I was looking for big smallies and didn’t really want to settle! Unfortunately it seemed like everywhere I wanted to fish, there were already boats fishing! With a big tournament just around the corner, people were pre fishing pretty much everywhere. I would have to make the best of it and hit some smaller areas hoping for a few fish on each stop. One of those such places provided nonstop action with largemouth for well over an hour. Although not giant, they were still fun and I wasn’t about to leave anytime soon! Craig & Steve just pounded on them and plenty of doubles were had before they just stopped biting. They had put a beating on these fish and educated most of them, causing us to finesse them towards the end. Although a few around four pounds were landed, most were smaller. I shifted gears once again and made another long run to a spot I had always wanted to fish. I had used Craig as a guinea pig before on other lakes and the outcome was usually good. Hopefully this time would be too! As we were in search mode, I had both of them tossing baits that would cover water quickly. I was seeing some big bass cruising just about the same time Steve hooked up & knew he had one of the giants. This fish took him out to the open water almost immediately and the fight stayed vertical. We could see the bass down deep and even there it looked big! When he finally worked it to the surface, I wasted no time netting his catch. This would turn out to be the largest smallie of their day but many more much bigger were seen frequently. I snapped a few pics and returned her to the school of others. Craig tried fishing deep with a jig and managed to get a couple of smaller fish to take his offering. With flat calm and bright sunshine, seeing them was about all we were doing here. I decided to go elsewhere and return a little later when the sun was lower. We had similar experiences everywhere we went with only a few fish landed each time they fished. Most of the shallower spots were holding quality fish, but catching them was a different story. We even went deep at one point and caught only small fish. Later in the afternoon I decided to head back to where Steve had landed the best fish and almost immediately we were hooked up. To everyone’s surprise though, it was a walleye of three pounds. Craig managed to catch another one and a few decent smallies, but nothing the likes of earlier. Eventually we headed back but not before making a few more stops along the way. Some smaller fish were landed once more before we called it a day. Finding fish today wasn’t a problem but catching them definitely was! I’m not sure if the heavy pressure or the conditions had them shut down, but most of the larger ones didn’t want to bite. I was grateful for the flurry of fish they got into this morning and looked forward to hitting a different lake tomorrow. Who knows what’s in store for us there!!