There is a lake near work that I fish during lunch on occasion and has some nice large and smallmouth bass in it. Funny thing about this body of water though, is that it fishes fairly hard for me. So my plan for fishing this day was to work top water since there was little wind to none. Started before work and fished an area that I normally fish and was fishing with a Rapala floating minnow. The water is still high and with no wind blowing figured that the fish would be cruising through the shallow water. Tried a number of different shorelines on this side of the lake and had a few blow ups but was not able to hook them. They were hitting short and I don’t think they were too big from what I could see.
Since that wasn’t producing like I would like it to be, during my lunch time I figured that I would take a hike to a different part of the lake. I stopped short of where I wanted to fish to make a few casts and had a blowup right away but missed that fish. A few more casts and I had my first 2 pound smallmouth in my hands. They were nailing the floating minnow with great force and in shallow water as well. Took a picture and released this fish and cast back to that area a couple of more time. Wasn’t long and another fish slammed the minnow but this time I had caught a pickerel. Made a few more casts and decided to head for the area that I was destined to fish.
This part of the lake is a large shallow gravel flat that gradually goes out to deeper water. There was a slight breeze blowing in and broke up the surface of the water a little. Wasn’t to many casts and a smallmouth blew up on the minnow and the fight was on. Landed this fish and shot some video and photo’s and released her back into the water. The object was to cast out as far as I could and slowly jerk the minnow back towards me. This retrieve seemed to be to much for these smallmouth as it wasn’t long and another was on the line. While fishing I noticed to my right down the shoreline there was activity on the surface and casted to that area. Two twitches and smallmouth number 4 was on. As I was fighting this fish in I could see that there was another smallmouth following it but I wasn’t able to get the trebles out of the one that I caught fast enough to try for that one as well. The wind was picking up a little and made it tough casting to that area without getting the slack line into the shoreline trees. I figured that next time I would be prepared to go into the water as this shoreline is wooded and there is no possible way to fish it from shore. At this time it was getting late for my lunch break already and I needed to get back to work so I headed back to the truck.
After work I stopped at a different location on the lake again and tried and had a boil on the minnow right away but they had missed it. Moved down the shore a little and caught another small pickerel and that was all I had time for. Problem I think on this shoreline was that the wind was blowing to hard into it and not sure if the smallmouth were even using it at all. Tomorrow I am planning on going back and prepared to go into the water and hopefully the rain will hold off and allow me to fish. Probably won’t be to many more days that these fish are in these locations and will be a little tougher to find and catch. All in all I had a great day and haven’t had a good smallmouth day in a while and made for an exciting lunch break, who needs to eat lunch when there are fish to be caught.
Our tradition is that of the first man who sneaked away to the creek when the tribe did not really need fish. ~ Roderick Haig-Brown, about modern fishing, A River Never Sleeps, 1946
