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David W. Reid
2017-10-20 01:47:01

Smallies On Fire


Each year my friends and I do an annual Birds and Smallmouth trip to a back lake. Unfortunately due to other commitments this year I was unable to make the trip so when I received a call from my good friend Lund Pro Staffer Crag Salmonson stating he was thinking about going again, you know I was in. Joining us for this trip would be our friend and television host of "FISH ON" Paul Ethier. "FISH ON" airs on Eastlink throughout Ontario on channel 10, for HD viewing 610 or you can watch it on Eastlink on demand. Since the weather forecast were calling for high winds on Wednesday and we were fishing out of a 14 foot with a 12 volt bow mount, we decided to leave at 5:15 am. so we could try and get at least the morning in before the winds picked. After arriving to our first spot that morning, Craig and Paul casted out their tube jigs while I opted to throw a jerk bait. Both Craig and Paul hooked up on their first cast. After netting their fish, I picked up my rod which I left in the water while netting their fish, give it a snap and was in for a fight myself. We just knew after a triple header that we were in for an amazing day. Craig was on a roll landing several brutes. Although Paul and I were catching some brutes ourselves, Craig was schooling us. Craig was throwing a different color tube than Paul so I handed Paul a tube of Liquid Mayhem Bass attractant and said try adding some of this to your tube. After adding some Liquid Mayhem to his tube, on his first cast Paul was rewarded with nice thick four pounder. Well lets just say I wound up playing net man for Craig and Paul for the next hour as they continued setting hooks on some real pigs. Here is an interesting tip I remember hearing Al Linder say some years ago, "after catching a fish, many top anglers ask themselves, what was I doing when I caught that fish". I noticed that after netting one their fish, I would catch a fish. This was because my jerk bait sat suspended in the water column while I was netting one of their fish. When I picked up my rod and give it a twitch, a Smallie would smoke the jerk bait. Knowing that was the key to throwing the jerk bait, I started making long pauses in between twitches. Although I was switch back and forth during the early part of the morning throwing a jerk bait and the Smart Craw, Craig and Paul where getting three to four cast in to my one and where hooking up every third or fourth cast. Since we only had a limited time frame to fish and we were their to have fun catching these pig, it didn't take long before I tied on an Angler's Choice Tube and added some Liquid Mayhem. After a couple of hours of landing some true brutes and the winds started to pick up. We decided to head over to a shallow reef that had a shallow flat with scattered rocks on it that dropped off into deeper water. Due to the strong winds and wind gusts making boat control difficult now, we decided it was time to use the anchor. After a couple of attempts, we finally were able to position the boat in the area we wanted to fish for the reminder of the day. The bite in this area seemed to be slow at the start until we started changing tube colors. Once we figured out which colors were working, the bite picked up. Every once in a while I picked up the jerk bait and was rewarded with some nice fish however the tube bite was non-stop. We finally called it a day at 3:00, however after our last cast, it wasn't until 3:30 when pulled up anchor. On the ride home we talked about the double and triple headers, netting two Smallies at once and how the fish were so fat that they just flopped over when they tried to jump. We figured out we must of caught only ten 21/2 pounders and at least 50 to 60 31/2 to 5 pounders with the average Smallie being 31/2 lbs. and that we had an another Amazing outing to this little gem of a lake. I recall reading an article by Gord Pyzer some years back. In his article if I recall correctly, biologist believe that the larger Smallmouth visit their spring spawning beds before winter to clean them up before heading to deeper waters for the winter. This may have been the reason why we caught the numbers and size of Smallmouth that we did. In one of the pictures you will notice Craig cutting off his tube that a Smallie swallowed deep. Rather than trying to remove it and possibly injuring it, it is better to just cut it off. We have been doing this trip for six years now and have never kept a fish so if you do happen to get on a bite such as this one, Please release them back for future generations to enjoy.
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