Warren & Yves joined me on Lake St-Francis for smallmouth bass today. The air temps dropped to 68 degrees overnight when a cold front came through and the water temps also went down to 74 degrees. A 5 degree water temp drop since Sunday can’t be too good, I thought! Light winds from the S/SW soon increased to 15 to 20 knots early in the morning and never let up through the day. Blue bird skies and high pressure were going to make for a tough day! Senko’s were used right off to get a couple of fish in the 3 pound range, but each place we tried only produced one or two bites as well. We did see plenty of big bass cruising around that just didn’t seem to want to hit. Yves had the worst of luck, as he just couldn’t seem to keep the bass on the end of the line for very long. At one time while fighting a 2-pound bass for 30 seconds or so it came off and a 4 pounder nailed his crankbait immediately. Unfortunately, that one came off as well! There was only one spot that had any real concentration of fish and they spooked shortly after Warren boated a few on a spinnerbait. I knew that this was going to happen and tried to monopolize on the situation by changing lures quickly. We must have seen about 12 to 20 big fish in this one area, but only got into about 4 or 5 of them. Typical of schooling smallies in a tiny area, spooked! We continued jumping around the lake looking for more active fish and even went for largemouth bass during the afternoon when the temps warmed up. Several blow-ups in heavy vegetation on surface lures only turned up a couple of largemouth, so we opted for the smallies once again. More cruisers, but not many takers in the afternoon were what we had the pleasure of experiencing once more. A few more fish were caught, but the activity level was definitely not what we would have hoped for! A tough day to say the least with around 15 fish landed up to 3 ¾ pounds. We must have seen over 40 fish, but not many takers! Tough bite today!

I had the pleasure of fishing with Benoit once again today for the first half of the day. This time however, he had two young boys with him. Alexi was from Isles des Madelines and David was from here. The run to the first location was like riding on air as we had mirror calm conditions. The humidity was almost unbearable but the air temps were only in the upper 70’s. Water temps were between 75 & 80 degrees depending on the location of the lake you were fishing. Fishing was a little slow to start, but Ben boated the first largemouth of 2 ½ pounds on a buzzbait and lost another larger one right at the boat shortly after. I decided that we should relocate & try for some smallmouth when the fishing didn’t improve. The winds also decided to move and began to blow from the S/SW at about 10 to 15 knots making for rougher water conditions. It wasn’t long before both Alexi & David both had smallies on and finally felt what they fight like. I could see that the weather was going to take a turn for the worse and opted for another move, closer to the boat ramp just incase. We continued to catch more smallies on a flat with crankbaits and Ben got a bonus walleye of 24 inches also. Unfortunately we were going to have to get out of there as thunder, lightning and heavier winds were approaching fast. We did get somewhat wet on the run back, but managed to wait out the storm in the truck for a half hour. Back we went to the same area when it cleared and the sun came out. About another 4 or 5 bass were caught in an hour making for a total of around 15 fish for the morning. All in all, a pretty good day!!

I fished on lake St-Francis with Neil today for Smallmouth Bass and had another tough day once again. We began by not knowing if we would even be able to fish when we drove through a torrential downpour, heading there. Fortunately, by the time we arrived at the lake it had subsided considerably. I do think however that it caught up with us about an hour later as we ended up fishing in rain so heavy that the auto bilge pump even kicked in. Fish were biting senko’s during all of this and the rain didn’t seem to matter! The winds were from the N/NE at less than 10 MPH and the humidity was unbearable. With the air temps in the upper 70’s early in the morning, we knew it was going to be a sticky one. Close to 15 smallies were caught today under extreme conditions, up to 4.5 pounds. Most of the day was spend either putting on or taking off our rain gear! There were so many floating weeds on the surface that presenting these baits was almost impossible in some areas, when the winds died off near noon. If we could have caught all the fish we actually saw today, it would have been a spectacular day on the water. Unfortunately most of the larger fish in the 4 to 5 pound range were lookers and not takers on this bizarre weather of a day. I guess we fended all right considering all that “Mother Nature” had to throw at us!

I had a tournament yesterday but was back on the water again for two days with David. It was going to be a learning experience for Dave as we were going to fish new water and new techniques on two different lakes. The first presentation was the senko for inactive fish. Within the first five minutes, we had our first bass on the line. It didn’t take long for him to see how effective the senko was. In the first hour, about 10 fish were landed up to 4.5 pounds. We had blue bird skies and humid weather with air temps reaching about 90 degrees by the afternoon. We had light winds from the West that eventually died off by about 1:00 PM making for a real hot, sticky afternoon. The bite slowed down once the sun got higher in the morning and we had a tough time getting into lots of fish. We were picking one here and one there everywhere we went. I decided that by the time the wind died, it was time to enter the shallows for largemouth bass. I rigged up a Scum Frog for Dave and let him loose in the weeds and pads. Within the first few casts, he had a fish of about 2 pounds on and landed it quickly. Several more blow-ups on the frog resulted in missed fish and frustration. A largemouth of close to 5 pounds was seen taking the bait within 10 feet of the boat as Dave set into him and lost yet another fish once again. I am not quite sure what was going wrong other that maybe not applying enough pressure when the fish was hooked, but more fish were lost than landed in this jungle of vegetation. We spent the rest of the afternoon until 5:00 PM working the slop for largemouth bass. There was definitely plenty of fish in the shallows once the sun warmed the water. Unfortunately, most of them were only seen from a distance! Overall, it was a good day as close to 25 fish were caught & released. The second day was quite a bit different as we headed to Lake of Two Mountains. To say the bite was tough would have been an understatement! The shallow largemouth waters were really shallow and muddy. We saw only a couple of fish and they were on the move. As for smallmouth, well that wasn’t much better either! With only about a dozen actual bites today, only a handful of smallmouth were caught up to 2.5 pounds. The weather was even hotter than yesterday reaching into the mid 90’s and very high humidity. The water temps were 83 degrees by the afternoon as well. Tough bite to say the least! Lots of water covered with little rewards for our efforts!

What a day! The weathermen called for intermittent showers all day with heavier rains in between. All I can say is thank god for our weathermen. How wrong they were! We had overcast skies all day with comfortable air temps in the low to mid 70’s. No winds were present until after 3:00 PM when a small rainstorm arrived. When I saw that the water temps were in the low to mid 70’s I told Benoit & Richard that this had the makings of a “Big Fish Day”. They were soon about to find out just how right I was! We started catching a few largemouth bass on an outside weedline up to 3 pounds before I opted for open water on the lake instead. The first spot produced at least 6 or 8 smallmouth bass up to 5 pounds. Every other location we fished afterwards was pretty much the same as well. A slow presentation with senko’s accounted for almost all the fish today as we jumped all over the lake looking for areas of the same bottom content. Each time we hit a new spot, a fish was usually caught on the first or second cast. When the winds & rain started to come in after 3:00, I opted for a sheltered area to fish nearby. As they were soon about to find out, this was a great choice as well. They continued to cast the same baits along outside weedlines and managed to land several smaller largemouth bass until Ben set the hooks into what he called “A Panfish”. To his surprise, a huge largemouth of 5.5 pounds was soon dancing across the surface of the water. “Nice panfish” I said! Another big fish added to the already spectacular day we were having. A quick photo and back to the depths she went. With around 30 huge bass caught today, we called it quits by 5:00 PM and headed home. An incredible day of fishing for trophy sized smallmouth & largemouth bass today. The average size was over 3.5 pounds with plenty over 4 pounds. There were even a few in the 5-pound class as well. Great day!!!