Incredible Fall Smallies!!!!

Once in a blue moon eveything comes together and it is Magical… Today we put several Monster Smallies in the boat that still has me shaking! Drag burning, boiling, heart stopping Smallies. My friend Jim Hagel is holding a fat 22 1/2" bass an eyelash shy of Seven pounds! He and my other good buddy Rich Clarke came up from Palatine, Ill to fish for big fall smallies…and they weren’t disappointed.

I had been guiding on several lakes lately and noticed the fall pattern setting in. Up here it means vertical movements from resting to feeding locations… and suspending near the thermocline where forage is present. We set out this morning on a crystal clear, Canadian shield topography lake called Chicaugon (Indian for wild onions). It has 103 fow and whitefish, trout, smelt, shad forage base. It also contains mega Pike, Walleye, Musky and panfish. The plan was simple..I searched for schools of baitfish with the Lowrance…sometimes at 25-30 fow over 60 fow bottom. When there were larger hooks of game fish present we would stop and pitch jigs/plastics through them. Rich’s effort paid off with this 6 pounder.

My most productive set up was a 5.5" Zoom Albino SuperFluke with an H2O Precision 3/16oz jig threaded in the nose…15′ of 10# flourocarbon ahead of 10 PP braided hi vis yellow running line. We used 6’9" MLXF and 7’MF Legend Tournament rods. I am liking the 7′ Legend "Tube" rod more and more…it has a soft sensitive tip section but loads nicely for great hooksets in deep water. This girl was pushing 5 lbs and really fought a spirited battle!

As the afternoon wore on we lost our good breeze and the bite became really tough… I loaned Jim my "Tube" rod and wouldn’t you know the rod doubles over on the second cast with another trophy Bronzeback over 6 lbs!!! We were now way past happy…more like "shellshocked". By 5:00 PM the lake was like glass and we thought we were done… Then Jim reared back on his 6’8" Avid and something big and powerful bucked back and stripped about 50′ of line off! After a long battle with lots of drag burning runs a 41" Northern Pike barely squeezes into my net… 17 pounds of Esox on an 1/8 oz jig…what a way to end a magical day on the water.

Now is the time for the biggest Bass of the year! Remember FLP? Food-Location-Presentation. Don’t spend time in shallow water with dying weeds… get on the thermocline, deep humps, deep tapering points and look for living (green) weeds near drop offs. More pics below…