MaineBassMan

They are not that slow; been catching them since early April. Just read this write up: Been catching them in 8 feet or less: Well the smallmouth were biting today! Got to the lake around 0905 and at the landing it was a balmy 38 degrees not counting the 10-15 mph winds . Didn't think we would do that well especially when there is still chunks of ice floating around the lake . We didn't catch anything for the first hour an a half until my friend caught a nice 3lbs 05oz. smallmouth on a Texas rigged rage craw. He kept throwing that with no more bites. I started out with a 6-9ft crankbait with no luck at all. Then I switched over to a Rapala gold suspending husky jerk-bait. About a dozen cast into the bait I was about to switch to something else when all of a sudden I notice a very nice looking bronze back following behind it. It never committed. I had a few more of these so I decided that they want that bait just not the presentation that I was using,(a little too fast). So I said to my friend "I think I'm going to try a longer pause between pulls" and on the next cast I hooked into a nice smallmouth at 3lbs 09oz. That was all she wrote, we started catching after that. We caught somewhere in the high teens as fare as numbers. Not one of them were under 3lbs in fact I do believe the smallest one was 3lbs 03oz. The largest ones were at 3lbs 13ozs. We didn't break four pounds today but our five fish smallmouth bag was a little over 18lbs. The bonus was that we also caught four brown trout on the same lures that all measured 15 1/2", Guess what I'm having for dinner? It was a great day! Here is the proof: Tight lines to all! 2011 is looking good! No duplicates all seperate catches.

one of my friends in my club caught an 8 pounder out of Sebago. They are here too just a little harder to find? It takes our bass longer to get big because of the short warm weather, but the forage is here. Our last tournament weighed in two 5 1/2 pound smallmouths.

Same here, we just had our second tournament and there were two smallmouths weighed in over 5 pounds, 1 largemouth over 5 pounds and about 10 over 4 pounds. I use the okeechobee a lot. Its one of my favorite colors. I like to put it on a green jig or a black and blue jig. Thanks for the kind comments for my Uncle.

Well its been a great season so far! Took my Great Uncle out today for his first trip of the season and he catches a nice one. Just shy of 5 lbs. This might be his last trip for a few months too because he has to start treatment for his cancer. This fish put a smile on his face though! Both fish were caught on jigs rig with a Rage Craw. That rod with the spinner bait was just put there, thats not what it was caught on. And mine from Saturday.

Awesome, Your always in them!

Congrats, Great looking bass!

Great looking Maine smallmouths!

Wow! its amazing what mother nature can do! sorry for the loss of your honey hole, I bet you'll find another

Looks like I'm going to have to get use to this weather, all it wants to do is ran.

It was crowded we had a couple of geese in our area. We are very fortunate here in that we usually have a hole fishery to ourselves. Not a lot of pressure in my neck of the woods.

Great photos and it looks like fun was had by all! Boy, those rocks look like they would do a number on your line!

Feels good don't it? I would say that bass is in the 5-6 pound range. Nice and fat, pretty bass.

Great looking bass, and awesome picks! Your looking slim too, makes them bass look even bigger!

Thats rough fishing in that kind of wind but it looks like you prevailed! Congrats and nice Bass!

Thanks guys! He is a happy camper and already wants to plan another trip. I have to find away to fit him in between tournaments, plus my Grandfather wants to try and go fishing again after 5 years of not going because of health issues, plus my Great Uncle is fighting prostate cancer and he wants to go plus my father so I don't know how I am going to plan all these trips? Got another tournament This Saturday and it happens to be on part of this river system. I hope I can get on them like this during the tournament. Oh and ya he beat his PB three times in three cast; he caught a 2 pound bass then a 2 lbs 14 oz bass an then the 5 pound bass.

He is a trooper we woke up to rain again this morning but there was no wind. I called him up and asked if he still wanted to go and he was like your dang right I do! Got love the spirit so I suited up and met up with him at the gas station. This guy hardly gets to go fishing and his tackle is made up of whatever essential bait that I told him he would need. Lets make a long story short; we fished in the river and he hooks into his largest bass ever, and it put up a nice fight. In fact it was kicking his butt but he overcame the obstacle and landed a nice 5lbs 05oz largemouth. This is his new PB! his Previous PB was 1lbs 08oz, a big bump up. He said that it was because of his excellent guide and I told him nope it was all you. He has only caught maybe 20 some odd bass in his life. He couldn't believe how much bigger a 5lbs bass looks and then he said I wonder what a 8 pound bass looks like, I said don't push your luck! Well here is the proud fisherman! He caught it on a Black and Blue 3/8 oz jig with an Okeechobee colored Rage Craw trailer. A few more from the day;

Thanks for all the nice comments.

Congrats on a great win!

The only picture I took during the whole tournament: A live well full of fat smallies:

Fishing a jig and craw again today, the lake was like glass today, which is a nice change from all the wind! Caught a nice 4lbs 08oz largemouth on the black jig. Put up a nice fight. Caught a few three pounders too. They were very active today, you would toss your jig out and see a V-line come from 10 yards away and smash your lure. It was great fun and we caught 32 bass all together. Here is the 4lbs 8oz. largie: A few more from today: A few smallmouths from a few days ago:

Had our first club tournament of the season on Easter morning. Had 33 boats show up and the tournament was from 8-4. My father and I fish as partners in tournaments and we were in the fish immediately. My dad caught a 3.75 # smallie on the first cast! We had our five fish limit in like five minutes! The bite stop as quick as it started. I broke my favorite rod during this catching frenzy. After the bite stopped at our location we move about 300 yards over to another point and set the trolling motor anchor feature. I picked up my cranking rod with a 1.5 KVD crank (go figure) and on my first cast caught a 3# smallie and three more nice sized bass followed it to the boat. Then another feeding frenzy started and we literally had fish pouring into the boat! We had three fish laying in the bottom of the boat and I'm trying to weigh them so I can start culling the one in the live well as this is going on my Dad had his rod laying on the gunnels and the tube bait was hanging over the edge and a smallie jumped out of the water and nailed that bait and almost took the rod with him! Dad grabbed the rod and landed the fish. We ended up culling four fish in that frenzy. Then that bite stopped. We moved back to our original spot in the last half hour of the tournament and I threw a black jig with black red fleck craw and caught a nice smallie that ended up culling our smallest bass. We were amazed to hear that most of the other teams didn't have the luck that we had and that they struggled for five fish our didn't catch anything at all! Guess we were at the right place at the right time. We ended up taking second place with 14.75 pounds, (smallmouth tournament), and the team that beat us won with 16.08 pounds. They were the only other team that hit a school of them like us, they just ended up catch a really nice 4 pound Smallie that almost went 5 pounds. So in the end I'm happy with 2nd place out of 33 boats for the first tournament of the season. We caught them on spinner baits, tubes, jigs and crank baits.

Nice looking hawg, Nice lateral line too.

Great fish, sounds like you had a great time.