Sight Fishing 101

I had Peter back again today and this time he had his nephew Mike along for the ride. They would be fishing a half day morning and I wasted no time racing to our first spot. High heat & humidity overnight held the water temps at 76 degrees and the morning air was already sticky. Sunshine was upon us as they cast their lines in hopes of catching some nice smallies. Mike had brought along his bait caster and after seeing how it performed, I had to try & tweak it for him. I did all that I could and increased the distance but a good cleaning and more line to fill the spool was what he really needed. Peter didn’t wait and was into a nice bass almost immediately. Even before we were on the spot he managed to hook a roaming smallie and was fighting a nice one to start the day. He also managed to get the second, third and even fourth before Mike ever hooked up. In fact he may have even caught the fifth one before Mike landed his first! All I know is that he was on fire and so were the smallies. The soft plastic bait he was throwing was performing well and I had to switch Mike up to one in order for him to get in the game. Well it didn’t take long for him to hook into several fish, but landing one was a different story. They were not staying pinned and getting off before the boat giving him a little frustration. Eventually he managed to keep a few on and brought them to net. Finally fish worthy of photos! Peter on the other hand was still getting plenty of attention from the bass and even landed a couple more. Overall they must have lost 75% of the ones that they had chances at, but they still caught a bunch. The winds had began this morning, blowing out of the SE and eventually rotated to the west and increased considerably. When this switch happened, we had more lookers and very few takers. In fact most of the bigger ones seemed like they didn’t want any part of what we were throwing, by paying no attention at all. Some of them barely followed and never really attempted to attack it either. I changed baits several times and each time the results were the same. Finally I decided to move to another area nearby in hopes of getting them into a few more fish before we had to go. It didn’t take long before Peter landed a small one, but at least we had some action. I had begun to make a few casts in order to see if it was them or the fish and hooked up almost immediately. A quick switch of lures on Mike’s rod had him missing a couple more. One of them was a real giant too! Peter was also having a difficult time getting anything as well and it wasn’t until I was prepping everything to leave that he almost closed with another giant. Unfortunately he set too early and we watched the fish turn and swim off, back into the deeper water nearby. What was supposed to be a 7 till noon trip turned out to be extended by 90 minutes as I didn’t realize how late it had gotten. With no afternoon booking scheduled, it really didn’t matter as we were on fish and I just wanted them to catch! It sure felt nice running back to the dock with the insane temperatures we were having. A little breeze goes a long way and a big one feels even better! Overall this day started with a bang but ended slowly. Thankfully we had that rally in the beginning to carry us through the dead period we experienced afterwards. Oh well, we’ll get em next time!!