Canadian Drive to Smallie Lake Round #2

Last year in June I made my first trip with my good buddy Shawn Johnson to his Canadian cabin that lies amongst some of the prettiest Canadian area of lakes there is.

When Shawn asked me back in Feb to return back up there in June again with him…..Without hesitation I said "FOR SURE!" Our pursuit to chase the almighty smallmouth bass was once again our main target. Back in Feb, we picked a date that put us into mid June with hopes of hitting the pre-spawn bite in full force. After a quick 7hr ride to Canada and what seemed like a short overnight sleep on Tuesday night, we woke bright and early on Wednesday morning and eager to hit the water!

Day one….Wednesday morning we boarded my River Pro jet boat and headed straight for an area that was good to us last year right off the bat. This lake has exceptionally clear water and sight fishing is pretty much the name of the game for these shallow fish. After arriving at our first spot we both connected on our first cast with a couple mid sized smallies. We both looked at each other and thought….We could be in for a heck of a trip and would there be a way we could top last year? One thing we did notice right away was that of the spawning beds we had found, there were mainly males occupying the nests with the females not to be found closeby. With water temps up in this end of the lake at 72 degrees, I had a good idea that the females may have already spawned and we may need to relocate after too long if we want to tango with some of those bigger fish that this lake is capable of producing. After a long day of hitting some good spots from last year and new exploring as well on that end of the lake, we ended the day with a tally of 164 smallies with which the bulk of those fish were in the 12"-18" with only a couple fish in the 19"+ range. We had an absolute blast catching all these fish, but we surely wanted to connect with some of the bigger fish at some point in time.

Day two…..Shawn’s brother Pat jumped in with us and together we wanted to do more exploring of this big body of island tangled waters. We packed the boat for an all day affair and headed for the opposite end of the lake. When we arrived we noticed most of the beds occupied by all smaller males once again, but we remained content with an occasional 18"-19" makings its way to the boat for better part of the day once again. Our arsenal involved throwing Jimmy D’s Riverbugs and Swim Jigs, 4" tubes rigged with BFT’s Superdoo heads, Yum forked dingers, Rebel Pop-r’s, etc….all produced nearly every second or third cast all day long. It did not seem to matter where we went, we caught smallies nearly non-stop. Some areas had more smaller fish than others, but all in all it was simply unbelievable. Occasionally we dropped out a bit deeper looking for some of those post spawned bigger female fish and we did boat some bigger fish just over the 20" mark, but much fewer fish of course. Still all in all the action was tough to beat. We tallied the day with 264 smallies (we had a counter in the boat just to see what numbers we came up with).

Day three….We decided this was the day to find the bigger fish as we got the fast and furious catching out of our system. We put a few miles on the boat and we finally arrived on the south end of the lake when we saw water temps in the low to mid 60’s. This was encouraging to us with hopes of the fish on this end were not yet completed with the spawn. Low and behold the first spot we hit proved to us that our theory was true, the bigger females were right where they were suppose to be. Bigger shallow flats with sand and boulders were exactly where these fish stacked up and boy were they stacked. Shawn and I proceeded to boat back to back 20" fish including a giant 21-1/8" bruiser. Shawn and I proceeded to throw 1/16th oz Jimmy D’s black Riverbugs and absolutely clean house on these shallow fish. The slow fall of these light jigs were somewhat magical as I changed it up heavier frequently throughout the morning. The bigger 1/8th and 3/16th oz jigs were too quick of a fall for these fish. We got to watch first hand how these fish reacted to our offerings by actually watching them in this clear water. Shawn opted for the unweighted YUM Dingers for that ultra slow fall and did well also!

By the end of our trip, we boated nearly 700 smallies in just over 3 days of fishing. Although we did not see as many big fish as last year, it was just hard to believe you can catch that many fish and sight fish 99% of them, which was a real treat for myself. The River Pro came in quite handy for us this past week as we had the opportunity to explore some new water in fast fashion without too much worry of hitting one of the hundreds of offshore reefs.

I would like to throw a huge THANK YOU out to Shawn Johnson and his brother for having me up there to experience this trip with them again. I will see you guys next year for sure!

Look for more pictures to follow.