Driving across from Route 7, it was a cold morning with the outside temp in the truck reading 35°F. But the sun was shining - cloudless blue skies. Until I reached the lake. Complete and total pea soup fogbank. Check out the first two pics below.
I got my gear loaded into my friend's boat and we motored slowly out of the bay, wondering where to start. We decided to make our way up the lake a bit to a deep 12-foot weedline and start working it with crankbaits. The water was about 57°F and the weeds were starting to get sparse but the stuff still standing still looked pretty green. We worked that area for 40 minutes or so without any luck. My buddy alternated between a chart/white chatterbait and me with a number of medium to deep diving cranks.
The fog was still thick, though the sun had broken over the horizon and was working to burn it off, so we putted slowly to another spot with clearer water. Did I mention the water was very very stained? Anyways, we found a spot in the back of a bay with crystal clear water, 5'-6' deep, with bright green weeds, and we thought we'd get into them for sure. The surface was glass there, so I pulled out a topwater and started walking the dog while he ran a swimbait. No luck for me on the topwater, while he had two takes but no hookups on the swimbait, with the exception of a hammer-handle chain pickerel. We moved out to slightly deeper (10' - 12') water but still fairly clear and switched over to diving crankbaits and still had no luck. What's going on with the "fall bite", we were wondering.
The fog had finally lifted enough so that we could make a run so we went to the spot we had wanted to start with, rock shoreline, some ledge, broken rock in the water, and a bit of a flat with a hard bottom. Very little scattered weeds were present.
My friend started with the chatterbait again and I threw a crankbait, and we went down the shore and he picked up the first fish, a chunky guy in the 3-lb range. It was tight to one of the weed clumps. I switched to a suspending jerkbait, and had a take but missed by a weed clump. We got to the end of the shoreline with that type of bottom, and turned around and went back up it, this time deciding to slow it down, so both of us dragged pig and jigs on the hard bottom. The catches started picking up, with most fish in the 2.5 - 3.5 pound range. Even the fish that should have been 1.5 - 2 pounds had fat guts and probably weighed a bit more than they should have for their length. We went down the shore a third time and picked up a few more each. Slow and on the bottom seemed to be the ticket, as long as the bottom was hard, and there were some stickups to relate to.
We had a boat come in on us with 2 guys and cut in front of us on our second pass. They were pretty close, and they started working in the same direction as us, just ahead. Nice! It was pretty rewarding though to watch these guys come in and throw moving baits for a half hour and catch nothing, while we fished behind them with our jigs and caught 7 or 8 fish - all good ones. There was alot of rubbernecking going on in that boat until they gave up and went blasting away.
Anyways, we decided to see if we could replicate the pattern. The fog was finally gone, so we ran a few miles to another identical spot I knew. First 5 casts or so produced 3 fish, including a double-header. We were onto something. We worked that bank until the bottom type we liked ran out. We got a sharp warning that it had changed when on the same cast, my friend got an 8 pound pike and I had my jig bit off at the exact same time, not 10 feet from each other. The pike picture is on my friend's camera. I'll add it if he sends it to me.
We spend the rest of the day running to similar spots, and they all paid off. Some spots only produced a fish or two, but usually they were good ones, including the lunker of the day that I got that measured 19.25-inches. Probably a good 4-lbs and change. My friend got a nice smallie in one of those spots too, and we hoped to catch more, but my smallie spots didn't pan out, except for one more.
The morning by far had more action than what we had from noon on. I had to go at 4pm, and on the way back to the ramp, we figured we had over 25 fish for the day and likely a solid 16 - 17 lbs or more for our best 5. That's a conservative estimate - we didn't weigh any fish, but they all had really fat bellies.
Incidentally, my friend went back out after he dropped me off at the ramp, and he fished until dark and called me at 7pm on his way out. He found the smallies I had hoped to run into that day. He saw some gull activity, got a little closer and saw alewives being busted on the surface. He threw a topwater into the melee with no response, but as soon as he switched over to his swimbait, he started crushing them - and big ones at that. He said I could have got my 19" Master Angler smallmouth "many times over". Darn it!
Jeez, I gave my last ones to Jim. I'll have to raid Diane's supply.
PM me your email address and I'll send you the full sized photos. I always reduce my pictures to fit the computer screen for forum threads.
