What stage were your opener fish in?

What stage were your opener fish in and what general area were you in?

I Fished the Grand Rapids area.

Saturday, fished a typical smallie/largemouth type lake with good clarity and a good amount of prime smallmouth spawning areas. Started out at 10AM fishing fast withe spinnerbaits, rattle traps and swim jigs to no avail. Saw a few empty spawning beds. Water temp was at 52 degrees. Spent about an hour doing this.

Moved to the next likely spot and switched to senkos and beavers split shot rigged and a small tube on a Title SHot shorty jig and started getting into them. At the end of our pass through a reed area with good gravel, caught a few smallies and largemouths and then spotted a single smallie on a bed. Went back through and found several more beds with smallies on them. Temp was around 54 by then.

Then moved to probably the biggest spawning flat on the lake and it was loaded with spawning smallies. It was very windy by then so you couldn’t see them too easily. Temps got to about 56 degrees by early afternoon when we had to leave.

Sunday went to a more typical trout type lake that has smallies and largemouths. Water temp was 52 degrees there as well at 8 AM. Went right to the typical smallie spawning areas and found a few empty beds but saw no fish. Fished another shoreline, didn’t see any beds there indicating that this lake was a bit behind compared to the other lake and last year. Saw a few fish in 15 feet or so but no takers.

Went into a shallow largemouth type bay around 10AM, saw 54 degree temps and single LMs on beds. They were very spooky. Fished there until around 11 and then checked on the smallies and saw a couple singles on beds. Within an hour most of the beds we found in the beginning of the day had single males on them. Checked out the LM area again and quite a lot of the fish were on beds. After about an hour went back to the smallies one last time and two of the beds had two fish on them.

we had fish on beds and prespawn fish on one lake and prespawn fish on another. Working on a report that i will post later. Great weekend with 75+ smallies coming boatside and about 30 largies also. Little windy but got fish and found some great new areas that are going to be checked out next weekend

Charles Schmidtbaur

Both the places I fished on Sat. and Sun. the fish were on beds in the shallows. water temps were in the 63-65 range. a ton of small male fish. Not sure if the females have not moved up yet or if they were done and gone and the males were guarding beds alone. I have already caught 4 bass this year larger than my biggest last year. Got to love this delayed spring

The water temp was 54 on Lake Owen, Drummond WI. The smallies were found in 20fow off sand/rock points near spawning areas. The large mouth were found along new weed growth in 8-10fow.

As near as I can tell it doesn’t seem like a lot of fish are spawning in Platte/Sullivan in Central MN. It’s kind of hard to tell because the high water and wind we have been having has the water clarity down to just a couple of feet.

On Saturday water temps were upper 50’s to low 60’s and by Monday I was getting temps up to 65, but it obviously cooled down and was blustery on Tues which I’m sure dropped water temps right back to around 60. Yesterday I forgot the battery for my Garmin so I didn’t get any temperature readings. I fished around in a known spawning area and couldn’t get bit.

We were fishing the Aitkin area the past week. Water temps were 57-61 depending on the day. No smallmouth on this lake. No bedding largemouth were observed. Fish were on the dropoffs mostly where reeds met cabbage. No huge fish, but numerous 1 1/2 pounders as well as some monster rock bass and few incidental walleye. It appeared the bass were prespawn.