Cade Laufenberg

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above is a 5+ lb smallmouth that bumped my weight from 10-4 to 15-5, overtaking Kenny Woods by 12 oz. next is me doing a dance, followed by me holding up the boat!

Thanks for the support everyone! I caught all my fish this week using a drop shot. My friend Zac Cassill and I fished on Lake Erie Monday-Wednesday just for fun and we found that the best weight was a 3/8 oz and we were getting bit best with a short dropper.. 9-12". We used mainly wacky rigged senkos on our drop shots on Erie, but all 3 of my boaters for the Stren went to St. Clair. I had a skewed perspective going into the tournament that all the weight was coming out of Lake Erie and man was I wrong. Lake St. Clair is an absolutely incredible fishery! I started with the senko again and didn't get bit in the first 20 minutes so I switched to a 3" berkley Gulp! Leech in black and immediately had success. I caught 2 4-1/2 lb smallmouth and a couple over 3 to propel me to a limit of 18-12. That night we ran to the bait shop where i picked up 2 more packages of the gulp leeches and I stuck to them the whole tournament. I did weigh a few fish that came on a yum dinger but I never caught a St. Clair bass over 3 lbs on the senko. I really only used 1 rod all week, a 6'6" KVD medium spinning rod/reel combo spooled up with 8 lb Seaguar. The only reason I brought 3 rods a day was in case I broke my KVD, in case I wanted to drag a tube (which I didn't), and a baitcaster for fishing Detroit River largemouth on the way back to weigh in. The drop shot was great, especially on day 3 where my boater was on big fish (19 lbs day one) but he was catching them on a DT-16 crankbait. I knew the night before that I would do just fine dragging the D-shot behind him and picking out his leftovers. I caught bigger fish and far more fish behind him, and that crankbait bite really seemed to have died for him as he only had 11 lbs. The whole experience was just incredible, and I'm still having a hard time soaking it in, but I am extremely excited! Here are a few pics, I promise I'll post many more when i return home from vacation and get on my own computer. -Cade

I had the opportunity to fish the Detroit River Stren this past weekend and what an amazing experience i had. i caught 18-12 on day one and got myself in third place. day two i drew Keith Pace. I caught over 20 keeper smallmouth but couldn't get a big bite and weighed 11-3. i did not think i had the slightest chance of making the cut, but sure enough i only slipped to 5th place and 5 lbs out of the lead. i thought i needed18-20 to win the sucker, and i swung for the fences. my second fish of the day was a 5 lb St. Clair smallmouth. i proceeded to catch 2 more over 3 lbs but I just couldn't get rid of 2 babies. i thought i fell short but boy was i wrong. i weighed 15-5 and edged out Kenny Woods by 12 oz. for the win. it was unbelievable! i could hardly contain my emotion on stage. i will post pictures and more details next week when i get home but you can read the story at flwoutdoors.com, search 2009 detroit river stren. it sure is sweet to see the career earnings at $30,131!!

Caught this big girl last night on a swim jig. Water temps are all over the place, we were supposed to get 10" of snow last weekend but dodged that bullet thankfully! I found water as warm as 51.2 degrees in a shallow backwater, but this fish came in about 49. I love this time of year, it just feels amazing after sitting on a bucket on 2-1/2 ft of ice all winter long!

Brace yourself-- This thread is going to hit you with a TON of pics. Usually on the local forums I'll post after each good outting but on here I tend to compile a several outtings together into one post. The ice FINALLY went out around here just a week and a half ago. In fact, there are still a couple areas, to my disbelief that have ice on them. I checked one backwater today that appeared to still have a thick sheet of ice (probably at least 8") floating on it. Anyway March 18th was the magical date for me this year. My earliest date to catch a bass before that was March 26th in 2007. This year by far takes the cake as the best early season bass fishing I've ever had. The area we are fishing is a backwater with some very nice vegitation clumps that form a weedline in about 7 ft of water. We fish the clumps from the inside weedline to the outside and catch fish everywhere in between. The best bait that we've found has been a black and blue jig flipped to the clumps but I also found a few 3 lb fish willing to inhale a single colorado spinnerbait on a slow retrieve dropping it abruptly next to the clumps. Although a suspending rogue was not producing so much at first, I did use it yesterday with some fair success. Another technique has been swimming a jig in the clumps and popping it off the weeds. This technique helped me boat a pig over 4 lbs yesterday and my limit fish today. Today was quite an incredible day for me..My biggest 2 fish were 8-10 and my best 3 were 11-14. For here, that's gigantic. I had a 4-4 and a 4-6 both caught flipping the clumps. Unfortunately I had a 14-1/2"er in my limit and a 15-1/2"er that held me back from a real big weight, but I still hauled in around 16 lbs at a time of year where usually all a guy can catch are 12-14"ers. I don't know what else to say, if this is a prequel to the rest of the season, then I am absolutely stoked for the year ahead! -Cade first of the year my friend Chris with a 5 lber! 3-1/2 lber Chris again with an average one My friend Justin with his first of the year. Justin again a solid 3-3/4 lber on a rogue a 4+ Lber on a swim jig yesterday a 4-4 from today same fish Chris with a 3-3 this one was 4-6 same fish Chris with a 15-1/2"er that weighed 2-9! This one was 18" , fat, and 3-4, I still swear it weighed a little more but the scale doesn't lie I guess.. :-?

I think he was kidding... ;D

New record to add..Earliest I've ever been ice fishing in my life: November 23rd. 2-3" of clear hard ice in most places we checked. Funny, you wouldn't think the latest I've been bass fishing and the earliest i've been ice fishing would go hand in hand in the same year.. :-/ Here's to praying the warm weather of the next 5 days will reopen my honey hole...15 day forecast shows lows in the single digits starting Dec. 1st. :'(

Thanks guys. Unfortunately this may have been my last bass report for a while. Between my last update and Friday afternoon, we had 2 extreme cold nights that really did a number on what was left of water in the form of liquid. Everything is locked up right now, and Friday afternoon i made the official first walk on ice of the year. Heading out tomorrow with the short sticks to try and chase some first ice bluegills through the ice. Its just unreal how fast things change. I was fishing in a tanktop and shorts, no lie less than 3 weeks ago crackin' those jerkbait fish. Now I'm going ice fishing. good news is warm temps all week and sunshine. I'm hoping it will open up some of my honey holes so i can make one last hurrah...

The bass are definitely feeding on shad, but they are not in the dying stage yet. As the water cools the shad move further down in the water collumn. That's when the jerkbait becomes superior to topwater lures that we use earlier in the fall. The shad actually remain lively well into winter, and can be a huge pain while ice fishing because they are so grouped up that you can't see your lure or other fish on your flasher. Eventually they do die off, it usually takes a lot of ice and a good cold snap, usually mid January to mid February is when it occurs, and you start to see a die off in the shad. I think a lot of it has to do with oxygen levels in the water. Shad are definitely the "panzy" of all baitfish.. ;D

Got out today with my friend Justin for some more action. Broke 2 of the above records: - coldest water temperature to catch Largemouth in: 36 degrees -Latest in November- 11/19 We were out for 4 hours using jerkbaits again. The bite wasn't as impressive as Sunday, but we still did pretty good, racking up 19 keepers between the both of us. Justin popped a nice 4 lber that helped him get close to 15 lbs on 5 fish, while I just couldn't find a kicker, leaving me at a respectable, but not amazing 13-1/2 lbs. All in all a good outing, nice to know they are still eating with ice forming in shallow areas within sight of where we are catching bass! Pic This is my friend Justin with a nice 4 lber.

Oh, yeah that's shallow, you'll be fine with those sizes.

Good plan..Jigs are a big fish bait. Another thing you can do is take a big spinnerbait, 3/4 to 1 oz and fish it basically like a jig on the bottom. Just an extremely slow lift fall technique. I've caught hogs in cold water doing this..the one in my avitar hit a spinnerbait in 25 ft of water . Good luck popping that 5!

To answer your questions- The majority of the fish I caught were hanging near a rock/mud transition. A ways off the bank in 9-10 ft of water there is a really nice tree that a lot of the fish were suspending in. I simply used a jerkbait to fish over the top of it, and the fish did the rest, coming up to get it. I'd say the fish were suspending amongst the lims anywhere between 6 and 8 ft down. The primary forage in the Mississippi River is gizzard shad running from late July through winter, when we experience a shad die off. Then in the spring it becomes sunfish and crayfish. I did not catch any fish smaller than 12" or so, and though I still caught many dinks from 12 to 13-3/4", I'm not so sure that I didn't catch more keepers. to go a little further for farmboy, The area I'm fishing has a lot of deep water (for the river) ranging from 10-25 feet on average, and up to as deep as 56'. Early this month I had lots of fish roaming deep points that were eating the suspending jerkbait. I caught fish as deep as 30 ft at that time, most suspending from 5-8 feet down. The recent cool weather has moved those fish off the deep points and put them closer to wood cover. Also I noticed on my graph that the shad moved deeper. I think one could still catch suspending fish in those depths with a deeper jerkbait, but I have not tried it yet. and lastly.. amen to that. And after a certain point you don't really realize the difference between 10 degrees and -25..because you are numb. Spent a weekend on the ice last year during a whicked cold snap...Temps were ranging from -10 to 0 for highs. In the mornings it was usually around -20 degrees. We were out there catching fish though!!!

Well to say the least the day started off kinda rough. I hit snooze about a dozen times between 5:45 and 6:15, and ended up waking up around 8:00 wondering what happened. It was 28 degrees and snowing. After a slow start I made it out hoping to find some shallow fish, a change from what I've been doing. I headed to an area that i thought might be ok, and was immediately yelled at to "Get the F*** out of here" by one of hundreds of duck hunters in the area. I decided this wasn't for me so i trailered in to town to chase some smallies. Things just kept sucking more and more, and in the same area where i caught a 19.25 lb limit last year, i was only able to catch one 14-1/2" smallmouth. I headed to the backwaters and continued to have a tough time.. I painfully filled my limit switching off between a jig and a jerkbait. I pondered if I should go home and watch the second half of the packer game, or head south and try to make something of the day. I'm glad I chose to head south..Besides we are going to a Packer game at Lambeau on the 30th anyway. ;D The first spot produced one keeper and one dink on a jig. I looked at the temperature guage and it read 38 degrees. I was losing confidence fast. I moved to another spot and for some reason decided to throw the jerkbait again, even though I somehow thought-- no knew, that I wouldn't catch anything. Well I was wrong. It only took a couple of fish to get it down, and then it was almost every cast for quite some time. Of the fish caught, most were over 2-1/2 lbs, 6 were over 3 lbs with a kicker 4-1/2+ lb 20"er. I only wish I had pics to show for it, it was definitely the best day of the year for me despite the constant snow and sub freezing temperatures.. here are the records I broke: Coldest water temperature to catch Largemouth in: 38 degrees Previous: 41 degrees Biggest 5 fish limit of 2008: 17-1/2+ lbs Previous: 16-1/2 lbs Most Keepers EVER caught in a day: 35 Previous: 29 Latest in month of November to catch Largemouth: November 16th (This record will fall later this week, I gaurantee it ;D ) Also: -Biggest limit I've ever caught in that area -Top 10 biggest largemouth of the year -Most fish I've ever caught in open water during a snowstorm