What month is this? Sixty degrees and sunshine, largemouth on topwater, big smallmouth on wing dams, through in a few big northerns; pinch me I must be dreaming. My guest on Thursday was Steve Riederer of Rochester. I got an email from Steve on Monday wanting to know if Wednesday was open. He liked the forecast and had the time off. I was able to convince my wife the items on my to-do list could wait another couple days so we hit pool 5. We fished a couple of wing dams early and only caught a few smallies but one was a dandy. The one in the picture was Steve’s biggest smallmouth of the season. The fish measured 18.5” and as you can see from the photo she is well prepared for the winter. Everyone of the smallmouth we caught looked like they swallowed softball. You have to believe this extended fall will offset the cool temperatures of this summer and all species will thrive this winter.
Mid morning was a little slow but we picked-up some largemouth in wood on current. We also picked-up two northerns in some deep wood. The 36-incher in the picture hit a 1/2oz. chartreuse/white Booyah spinnerbait and was Steve’s biggest northern of the season. That buy itself is impressive but Steve has made 2 trips into prime northern country in Canada and his best fish came right in our backyard. Steve’s second northern wasn’t much smaller than the one in the picture. I’ve had several discussions with the DNR biologists in Lake City and they are seeing good numbers of northers in their population surveys. What’s really impressive is their growth rate. They believe that fish hatched in 2000 are already in the 30” range. Looks like our area can produce trophy fish if they aren’t all harvested. We need to practice catch-and-release on these big fish.
In the afternoon the sun came out and everything in the system started percolating. We came across school of largemouth on a deep stretch of riprap with some milfoil mixed in the rock. We would see an occasional fish feed on the surface but opted to fish them with suspending jerkbaits. Steve likes the Pointer 78 and I used my go-to Smithwick Mark Menendez Signature Rouge. The color is called “purple painter” but as you can see in the last picture it’s chartreuse. Someone will have to explain that one to me. The key to catching the fish was a long pause. Even though they were active, the water temp is 48 degrees and they seemed reluctant to burn a lot of energy chasing down a bait. As you can see from the pictures of both of jerkbait fish they are healthy, but not anywhere as well fed as the smallmouth. Even with the cooler forecast of next week the fish still should have several more weeks to bulk-up for winter.
After an hour of catching fish on jerkbaits we had to see if I could get one to hit a topwater popper. It took 20 minutes or so until the first one hit but persistence paid off. By the time we called it a day we took about 8 fish off the surface. They weren’t monsters but it sure was fun. This day will remain in my memory banks for some time and I suspect it will be the same for Steve.
I want to remind everyone not to move fish this time of year. They need to be released where they were caught.. If they are moved, they may not have the time or energy to make it back to the safety of their over-wintering area.