Today I had the pleasure of hooking up with Andre & Jim for more smallmouth action. Once again we began a little later and hooked up after 8:30 AM with the air temps below freezing. It managed to get up to around 38 or 40 degrees during the day and with the added sunshine actually felt warm. Unfortunately, the NE winds plagued us and blew around 10 to 15 knots making it chilly in certain areas being fished. We were fishing in current and dragging tubes, but with the wind direction had to stop due to a poor drift. Casting the jigs would have to do and they began hooking up not long afterwards. As long as I positioned the boat properly in certain areas, they were able to get into the fish quite regularly. They weren’t as big as yesterday’s catch, but there were a few in the 4-pound size taken today. Although most of these smallmouth were 1.5 to 3 pounds, they were still lots of fun to fight with the added current to aid them. I had seen a significant drop in the water temps since the last time I was here and was now fishing water between 48.3 degrees and 49.5 degrees depending on the location. This should have grouped the fish up better that it had, but the fishing pressure in this area has been incredibly high this season. Today alone, I had seen close to 10 boats on the water and it wasn’t even the weekend. The word’s out!!! It might not be so bad if people would practice “Catch & Release” more often. I had heard from a reliable source that a few days earlier, someone had filled a 10-gallon bucket to the rim with only the bass tails sticking out. This is just ridiculous! Just how many bass do you need to kill anyway!! Regardless, we were still able to land close to 75 smallmouth ranging from 1.5 pounds to over 4 pounds in less than 8 hours of fishing. I still consider this a great day!!

I fished with Cindy today on a local body of water and oh, how we crushed them! The overnight temps were pretty cold so we hooked up around 9:00 A.M., as there was no rush to get out at the crack of dawn. The day began below freezing and never made it any higher than maybe 38 degrees. Water temps had dropped a bit and were now 51.5 in most areas. It didn’t take too long to start getting into them on a regular basis and we were both locked up often. Big smallies of 4 pounds and better were being landed and Cindy caught one that went 20.25 inches and was as fat as a football. It must have been close to 5.5 pounds with that girth! There were plenty of smaller fish in the 2 to 3 pound range as well, but we were after the real giants today. I knew we were going to get into numbers of huge bass, but was hoping for something above 21 inches and possibly closer to 22. Unfortunately, this never happened and we had to settle for numbers of 19 to 20 inch bass all day long. It’s really tough when you have to catch only fish of that size! As usual, tubes were the hot ticket once more as these fish were glued to the bottom and never seemed to want to chase anything down that wasn’t in their strike zone. I’ve tried crankbaits and really haven’t scored well! Occasionally in the shallows, you can pick up a decent bass on a spinnerbait, but that’s only when they are really active and feeding. We ended the day a little after 4:00 PM and had 40 to 50 bass to our credit. It wasn’t fast & furious, but they were definitely worth the effort. I was glad that we had both dressed for the weather and had warm enough clothes on as clouds blanketed us all day long. It’s a good thing that it wasn’t windy either, because without the sun it would have been a real challenge too. All in all a pretty good day nonetheless!!!

I was back on the water again today with Warren, for more smallie action. It wasn’t as fast paced as I had expected, but it was still a great day. The weatherman had forecasted sunshine with cloudy periods in the afternoon and no chance of rain until the evening. As usual, he was bang on with the prediction too! We drove to the lake in a light, misty drizzle followed by heavy clouds and the sun finally showed late in the afternoon. You gotta love them!! The air temps reached about 45 degrees at best and the water temps were 53.5 degrees later in the day as well. Winds were out of the S and very light allowing us to fish quite comfortably. I believe that Warren locked up on almost his first cast with a high 3 smallie and we were on our way to many more. I tried getting into a crankbait bite several times during the day, but it never happened. Every fish caught today was on tube jigs fished slowly anywhere between 3 & 25 feet of water. Quite a big range! We tried several locations hoping to intercept a large school of bass, but found the best areas to be weed edges with a deep drop off adjacent and some sort of hard bottom along the outside. Some of the bites were so light that it was almost impossible to detect without a tight line. We did also get into a few decent smallmouth throwing spinnerbaits over the weeds just trying to cover water. The best fish however, came from the jigs and some almost dead sticked in order to get bit. It wasn’t fast & furious, but we still managed to get into about 75 bass by working several areas looking for the mother load. I think the best is still yet to come, as the heavy weeds need to die out before the fish go into their schooling phase. Right now the concentrations are small and you have to move around plenty in order to get into the numbers that I am so accustomed to at this time of year. All in all a pretty good day nevertheless!!!

It’s hard to believe that the fishing is so good at this time of year and most people don’t want to book because of the cold. These are the same folks that take their family to the mountains and ski during the winter months, under even more extreme conditions. All I can say to this is, “What a Shame”! After several days of not being on the water, I was out yesterday for 4 hours with a friend and just hammered the smallies. I was back out again today with my wife Christiane and Rick for more of this action and did even better. We all landed fish over 5 pounds along with many, many over 4 and an uncountable amount of 3 pound plus bass as well. Spinnerbaits caught several smallies, but the tube jigs accounted for the bulk of the over 50 bass taken in about 6 hours. We targeted deeper water of 12 to 18 feet to begin with and Christiane was into one on her very first cast. It wasn’t all that big, but it was the icebreaker that started the ball rolling. The weather wasn’t great with overcast skies all day and a chilly light wind from the NE. If the sun had of shown for more than just a few minutes during the day, it would have warmed up the shallows, activating even more bass into feeding. Unfortunately, we were faced with casting into mostly 5 to 10 feet of water to catch the bass we did. Water temps were barely 54 degrees and I don’t think the air temps went much higher than maybe 44 degrees at best. Somewhere around 4:00 PM we called it a day and headed back to the boat ramp. There are still plenty of healthy weeds that need to die before the big number days occur and this is good for me. As long as the nights don’t drop too cold, it will delay the winter from arriving and extend my fishing at least until the end of this month if not into December. There are still plenty more days left before the deep freeze arrives and I plan on taking advantage of as many as I can before the boat gets tucked away for the winter. I suggest that if anyone wants to experience some of the greatest bass fishing of the season, now’s the time to get out and hit the water! It just doesn’t get any better than this!!!

This morning I had the pleasure of fishing with Scott, Shawn and Lorne from Ontario. I had fished with Scott the past two falls and this time he treated both his father in law & brother in law to a day on the water. He had been bragging about how well he does every time he fishes with me and they wanted to see if it was true. Unfortunately, we had a miserable day to prove anything as it rained all day long. It was just horrible and really windy too! Its no wonder that there was nobody else fishing, as we were the only crazy’s on the water today! I figured that with three guys in terrible conditions, they were all going to be throwing jigs all day long. I didn’t want a repeat of earlier in the year when someone buried a treble hook into his buddy’s ear and stuck with the single hooks today. They were a little slow in getting started, not having dragged jigs along the bottom for bass before and I demonstrated with a hook-up on my example cast. Once they saw this, they had the confidence and the games began. It wasn’t long after that everyone began hooking their own fish, but most of them were coming off due to either poor hook sets or rods not bent enough afterwards. These are strong fish and you really have to get that hook buried and keep the slack out of the line in order to land them. There were 4 great spots today that produced many a fish and the other areas had some action, but a little slower than I wanted. The biggest problem was the rain and dirty water! I knew that if they had any chance of getting into them that they would have to fish slow and right on the bottom. After a few hours they were all holding their own and quite competitive too, I might add! There was a lot of trash being talked and some of it came back to bite them in the butt on occasion. I’m not really sure who caught the biggest or the most, but I do know who lost the most! Unfortunately, I’m sworn to secrecy and can’t tell! All I know is that everybody caught plenty of small, medium and even large fish today and that’s all that counts. As I said to them, “for every fish you lose, there’s 10 more waiting to eat your jig”! Apparently this was pretty accurate as Scott missed 3 strikes and finally locked up on the fourth, to land a four-pounder. I think that by the end of the day, it was about 50/50 as far as the landing losing ratio goes. All I know is that it was more than I had expected under these conditions and would have been happy with just 25 or 50 bites. All in all, despite the weather, it was a fantastic day on the water and nobody got hurt!!