Any Smallmouth Reports in Hayward Area?

Has anyone been out on LCO, Round, Or Grindstone? Heading up there in 10 days to chase Smallies…. Any info would be great!

Tommy. How are you buddy.
Head to the st. Croix some smallies on beds on the bars.

Been out a few times to start the season on GS and Round. I haven’t seen any fish bedding down yet, but that could change later this week and into next. Should be outstanding fishing for you when you get up here. Good luck!

Awesome News!!! We have been going up there 4 or 5 years now and we have pretty much whacked the pre-spawners with nothing even pulling up!! This year year is shaping up a little differently, hopefully hit those pre-dawgers and the first wave!! Were excited!!

Groff- Good luck out on the Croix!! Send report!

Heading up for 6 days on Friday. Hope to at least get in on prespawn.

MWAL

MWAL-

Will you give us a report? We are leaving next Thursday afternoon we may cross paths… What lake are you going to hit?

Eauclaire Chain and possibly ROund or Grindstone

It has been a very very goofy spawn so far this season. Many fish already bedded up and left in under 24 hours due to the cold front last week. Round had the most spawners so far. Gstone and LCO look a little more stable for the spawn as long as or temps stay consistent. Even the prespawn bite has been funky. With some fish very prespawn we are getting a few jerkbaiting. Then other fish slid off beds or are close to spawning and can be caught on finese stuff. Then other fish are on beds or post spawn and are in between bedding areas and post spawn mid depth structure. Weirdest spawning cycle/period I have ever seen. Here are a few from the past few weeks.

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It’s been interesting (read: difficult) out there the last week or so out there for me. Last weekend with the brief warm up, we found fish starting to creep back shallow and were able to make a good day out of it. Skipped fishing Monday and Tuesday, but Wednesday was a real weird one. Picked up one fish on a jerk bait fishing a fairly sheltered northern bay, but the fish that I’d seen were pretty finicky. Switched up to the fly rod and a Clouser, and started putting a few in the boat. It was painful to fish as slow as the fish seemed to require it. From 1-7pm I managed 8 fish, and had to really work hard for them. None were the monsters I’d hoped to find, but it was nice to see a few fish. Had one BIG musky think long and hard about making a meal out of a smallmouth that I was bringing to the boat. I’ll be returning to throw a few casts for that musky this weekend If all I caught between now and Sunday was that one big musky, I would be happier than a pig in the mud.

I never went to Round or LCO The horrible conditions put the fish off the beds until Wed then some started to filter back on and some were just cruising the drop offs. Drop shotting worked best for me and I was to get into some really large smallies. The weather has them in and out of the shallows on an hourly basis it seems. Seeing the cruising fish and getting the drop shot well in front of there path was critical. blind fishing produced zero on x-raps etc. Bedded fish were susceptible to the drop shot ignoring tubes or arkie style crayfish patterns. Once again stealth long casts and flouro leaders did the trick. To bad I had to come back to work. This weekend should be good.

Mwal

Past few days have been awesome on LCO and Round. Catching a few on beds. Most of our larger fish the past couple of days have come from deep humps and cribs. A few deep prespawners but mostly post spawners. There should be another wave a spawners moving in today or tomorrow. A lot of areas that typically have beds are empty still. Majority of our fish are between 18.5 and 20.5 inches.

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