Smallie report

My brother and I were up on the 6/17 on the south side cove bay and wahkon shorelines fishing smallies. My brother’s top 5 smallies were around 21 pounds! 19+”, 20 1/2″ 20 3/4″, My best 5 were about 18 pounds, just an awesome day.
The fish were relating to the biggest boulders off flats, depth was anywhere b/t 1 and 8 feet, and we were dropping senkos in brown/black patterns next to them, they seemed more aggressive with this color than others and other baits like tubes of similar color. the fish would still show themselves with the other baits and colors, but they were less nervy to hit them.

After a while of not finding big rocks holding them, we noticed smallies rolling on the surface all over and we would cast to them catching them that way. seemed they were all in the area hitting on what we think may-flies or 1″ fry that seemed to be in different areas near the surface. We threw senkos and tubes in the vicinity of the roll and would catch the fish almost immediately on the fall of the bait. smallmouth season is here, i just love those fish!

I was then out on 6/21 and had less success. The wind was blowing pretty good and my partner and myself only ended up boating 4 fish. The biggest was around 17 inches. We saw a large amount of fish following our bait back to the surface or looking at the bait in the water but they where not willing to take the bait. we tried everything on them, senkos, tubes, jigs, cranks, spinnerbaits, topwater, etc… I think with the abundate of flies in the water the fish have a large amount of food to eat and chose from and this just might be the time for the flies.
Has anyone else had the same results with these fish, any solution?

Hope to be up there in a couple days, maybe a week. have a tourny this weekend but hope early next week works.
Good luck and keep the reports coming.
A

Awesome report. Thanks for sharing it with us.

I’ve been experiencing a great Senko bite on smallies also.

They are almost like a “wonder” lure. Anything with a metal flake has been producing for me. How were you rigging them? I’ve been going weightless on a 2 or 3/0 offset worm hook. Gamakatsu seems to perform very well. So many plastics, so little time.

I rig them texas style with a 3/0 or 4/0 texpos hook. I then fish it weightless. I haven’t been up there since my last report. How are you riggin them? Hopefully I will get up there again soon. Is the water pretty stained now?

I managed to get back home for awhile and do some fishing on the pond on Sat. and Sunday morning. Saturday was a little tougher bite for walleyes than I’ve had in awhile. Decided to take my 8 year old son smallie fishing on Sunday so he could have some action. This is a fairly new thing for me as I’ve always chased the ‘eyes. We did find fish but not in large numbers or overly large fish. Caught all of them on tubes. However, they liked it deadsticked more than anything. I could see where the unweighted sinkos could have been a killer. Location for us was rock piles with various size rocks in 3 – 6 feet of water or shoreline structure that had a sharp break to it. We didn’t take any fish on structure where the rock was all the same size. It needed to be different.
The water color wasn’t too bad. A little stained, but still relatively clear. I’m heading back up tomorrow and hope to get the boy out on the water again. He had a blast and those smallies sure pull hard.

I’ve been rigging the same way. Weightless and they have been tearing them up. I’ve been using them on the St Croix River. Nice lure. That side to side slow sink action is great.