I hit the water this morning with Buddha & his faithful companion Norm, or was it the other way around. We were on a quest for smallies and it was to be the first time that I fished for them, exclusively this season. The walleye bite has been way too good to change up completely! It was going to be a hot one and I knew we wouldn\u2019t be lasting the entire day with the big guy on board. Air temps were to reach the mid 80\u2019s with high humidity and the winds were to diminish to almost nothing by mid day. We stopped on our first location and Norm started slinging spinnerbaits for the brown bass in hopes of a few violent hits. Well, first cast he was crushed and loved the feel of being violated again! This carried on for over 30 minutes on just about every other cast before it slowed enough to warrant a change up. When we began throwing tubes, it started all over again & many more smallies came aboard. Back to spinnerbaits and a location change and Norm was back in the grove. We hadn\u2019t moved very far but it was enough to get a few more aggressive fish to react to the blades once more. I hadn\u2019t been able to introduce Norm to the \u201cDrop Shot\u201d last season and decided now was the time to let him see it in action. I had a place nearby that broke to deep water and we were going to cast the drop. Well as luck would have it, he caught on as quickly as I had anticipated and it wasn\u2019t long before we were doubling up. Both walleye & smallies were falling victim to the offering and it was a blast! When the action slowed, I decided to move once more and get him right back on the blade bite as he enjoyed the hits so much. I tossed a tube jig to the outer drop as Norm began chucking the spinnerbait to more aggressive smallies. We were both catching, but I was the only one bringing in walleye as well and then it happened. Norm knew by the boil and hit that he wasn\u2019t in Kansas anymore! What he had hooked into was a nightmare in his eyes and he wasn\u2019t happy. Most fishermen would have been thrilled, but not Norm as he was locked up with a big old lunge. I knew by its size & the tackle he was using that we would be here a while and settled in for the long awaited bitching. Norm has a history with muskie that initiated a few years back when a lunge ate his bass while he was fighting it. Although he did land the beast, the bass became history and thus began the feud! This time however, it was direct on the spinner bait and considerably larger. When I was finally able to get the boga on her, I realized it was a fifty plus. The battle wasn\u2019t as long as I thought it might be. Norm muscled her to the boat quickly but not for the fish\u2019s sake. He just wanted it off his line so that he could get back to casting for smallies. It was a win, win situation as the muskie wasn\u2019t stressed out as much as she could have been with a lengthy battle. Although I held her before the release, I could feel the power and knew she was ready. Off she went to harass more of Norms bass another day! When Norm finally stopped complaining about those \u201cHateful Creatures\u201d we went back to fishing. Poor Buddha had worked up quite a sweat during the fight and needed to be cooled off before we relocated. He got a dunking right where we were and came back a new animal! We hit a few more areas and Norm caught a couple more smallies before we pulled the plug completely and headed in .By now the heat was unbearable and we were ready. The wind had died completely and the damn dog pecker knats were in full force. Although we had only fished a half day, it was a productive one and we were satisfied. Well mostly, except for Norms beast! Gotta love the unexpected!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I hit the water this morning with Buddha & his faithful companion Norm, or was it the other way around. We were on a quest for smallies and it was to be the first time that I fished for them, exclusively this season. The walleye bite has been way too… Read More →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fishing-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1316\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/advancedbassin.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}