The Smallmouth Bass fishing over the past week has been pretty good with nice numbers of fish being caught along with some bass running in the 5 pound class. With the warmer weather continuing the water temps have been holding in the low 60 degree range with out much change in a while this has the fish scattered around with some areas having fish concentrated in larger groups.
As Fall progresses and the weather cools along with the water temps we will typically see the fish concentrate in larger groups as apposed to being spread out over a larger area. We have been continuing to fish with live bait rigs with succer minnows on 1/0 VMC circle hooks tied to a 10lb sufix flourocarbon leader attached to 10lb monofilament line.In addition to fishing the live bait rigs we have also been casting blade baits along with #7 Rapala Rippin Raps.When casting the blades and Rippin Raps I have been throwing them on 12lb sufix flouro leaders tied to 20lb sufix 832 braid on a medium action St. Croix spinning rod.
Yesterday brought cloud cover and strong north winds and as we approached our first fishing spot of the morning it was evident that we were going to be dealing with wind. With in 5 minutes of fishing the first rod bent and on board came a beautiful 4lb Bass shortly after that another fish was on and to our surprise it was a beautiful 26 inch Walleye. While we do occasionally catch walleyes in the areas we fish the Smallmouths we do not catch a lot of them so at this point it was a bonus catch.A short while later I made a cast and hooked a nice fish that felt pretty heavy which ended up being a 29 inch Walleye another bonus catch only to be followed by another 29 inch walleye. Having decent success in this area the day before with nice Smallmouths we were now catching more Walleyes than Bass in this area. After fishing this area for a couple of hours catching 5 Walleyes from 26 to 29 inches along with a some nice Smallmouths including one over 5 lbs we were just not seeing the numbers of Bass that I expected to see so we changed locations.
After making a move a couple of miles away we set up in another area that had been holding some nice Smallmouths and began marking decent numbers of fish on the locator and they were behaving well and we were catching good numbers of Bass along with some really nice size fish ranging from 3 to 4 1/2 lbs. The day was cut a little short due to heavy rain which began in the afternoon on top of very windy conditions but we will be back out soon.
Paul Delaney
www.lateeyessportfishing.com