Bass Bass & More Bass

I really had a full boat today as Tony, Antoine, Kevin & Ray were with me. Smallmouth were on the list and I decided to start with them as it had been a while since they were targeted. As usual, the winds were blowing but for some reason, they didn’t seem as bad. Maybe I’m just getting use to it! With the air temps scheduled to get into the mid 80’s the water temps would surely be on the rise. I hoped that this would make for more aggressive fish today. I ran for a while and stopped in an area that held fish and set everyone up for the challenge. Kevin drew first blood with a blade fish and I knew it was going to be a great day! The others were all throwing soft plastics and getting hit as well. Some were coming aboard but many were being missed by poor hook sets. With a little instruction, this was soon a thing of the past and more fish were being landed. I never had to go far and fine tuned this area, keeping them on the fish the entire time. Amazingly, it was almost 1:00 before we decided to break for lunch and change species and locations. The winds had picked up considerably by now and we were drifting while eating and getting closer to where I wanted to troll. Despite the high winds, the SW direction made the waves smaller than I had seen all week. It may have been  gusting 25 knots but the conditions seemed perfect for a troll. I set the lines and began where I had been having great success. This was the latest that I had fished this area and hoped it would still produce. After about 30 minutes with only a small eye to show for our efforts, I moved on to another place nearby hoping it would be better. The first fish was a nice 24 incher and just like usual, the reel never fired. I just noticed that the rod was bent and informed Tony to grab it. Ray, being from Florida, had never seen a walleye and was quite impressed at how the fish looked. Too bad he never got a chance to eat one because he would have really been impressed at their taste! A few pics and a release and back she went. In the last hour or so they managed to land a couple more northerns, a giant perch and another nice walleye before we called the day. They decided to end it at 3:00 as they all had things to do tonight and needed time to get ready. I definitely made the right choice this morning by starting with the smallies as they put a beating on them. So much so that we were able to stay pretty much in one area the entire morning and catching the entire time. Everyone had landed a good number of fish today and had a great time in the process. Hopefully with all this warm weather finally upon us, things will stabilize and the fish will set up in their summer locations. It’s definitely beginning to look that way now!!