I know these fish aren't huge, but as a total newb troller I was beyond ecstatic with the results. There's a very, very, weedy bay approximately 2 miles from my house, but I have barely ever fished it. I've solo fished it by myself only twice before today and both times I ended up snapping off multiple lines on the prop and losing quite a few fishing lures. I'd gone out yesterday and had a weird experience of a fish grabbing a keitech swimbait I was fishing, by the tail, and swimming off with it. I fought it for a good 30 seconds before it bit off the tail of my keitech and swam off. It was never hooked so I figured it was a walleye. Luckily, I had two other 4.3 inch Keitech Swing Impact Fat swimbaits at home in pro blue/red flake. I rigged them up on a 4/0 swimbait hook texas-rigged and slid a 3/8 oz bullet sinker above the lures to keep them down in the weeds. As an experiment, I slid a trailer hook onto one of the Keitechs and threaded it through the body texas-rigged behind the swimbait hook. I wasn't sure if the extra hook would help with short-strikers or would interfere with the tail's action, so I only did this to one of the lures. I headed out to the bay in my 14 foot aluminum boat just before 8 AM this morning and starting long-lining the swimbaits 200-250 feet behind the boat. I don't have planer boards, GPS, depth chart, or a fish finder, so I was relying on my Navionics $10 app. I just followed the break-lines it displayed on the screen. After about an hour and a half I hooked into my first smallmouth. Let me tell you, fighting a smallmouth 250 feet behind the boat is one of the hardest ways I've cranked in a fish. Those things fight hard from way back there. I soon hooked and landed another on a different stretch. I then hooked into another, but it popped off as I was fiddling with the anchor rope. I soon found a honey-hole stretch I named 'Amen Corner.' Every pass by it yielded a smallmouth. It was non-stop action. For fun, I wanted to see if I could catch a limit of smallmouth and I needed just one more. I pulled into the opening stretch of Amen Corner after letting about 200 feet of line out and closed my bails. Just as I do so my engine kills, so I get to work cranking it. I see something out of the corner of my eye and it's my rod getting jerked! You have got to be kidding me. It couldn't have drifted more than 5-10 feet and a smallmouth hammered it. It was unreal fishing. All fish were 14-16 inches and the heaviest fish was 2.22 lbs. Bag weight was 11.20 lbs. After pictures, some of the fish were cooked for dinner and others tossed back into the water. I look forward to hitting the bay again in the future because I think I have these bronze backs dialed in. Yes, Keitechs are deadly on all species. Included is a video of the last two catches start to finish. Btw, the last fish was caught solely on the stinger and I caught a couple others on that lure, so I don't think the extra hook affected the action. I'll probably add a second hook to the other one. Fish On
