My best smallmouth fishing trip so far for 2009

[MaineBassMan]

I have posted these in the Northeast and Tournament/fishing trip topics, but I think I should of posted them here. So I'm sorry if you have viewed these already. To be honest I think this was the best smallmouth fishing day of my life so far and I'm still in a little bit of shock. I actually think that I lost my PERSONEL BEST smallmouth that day, He looked to be in the five pound range. Unfortunately my treble hooks popped right out of his mouth when I had him about a foot from the net :'( oh well right!

My father and I went back to the place I fished on Wednesday and had an Unbelievable day of fishing. We caught exactly 40 smallmouth today and lost about 5 big ones. All of them were well over 2lbs and we caught 10 that were over 3lbs. We caught two 4 pounders. Our 5 biggest bass were: 4lbs .05oz, 4lbs 01oz, 3lbs 130z, 3lbs 11 oz and 3lbs 09oz for a total of 19lbs 07oz. This is one of our better days. Not bad for Our second trip of the season.

I'm having a hard time on deciding whether to go back to that lake tomorrow or go an extra 30-40 minute drive further to this other lake that has the same quality of smallmouth but is a much larger lake.

These bass caught me off guard. I usually do my best at this lake with tube baits and jigs. I fished those for about an hour with no bites. Then because of my nice polarized glasses I saw a big school of 6-8 inch smelts swim by, A SMALLMOUTHS FAVORITE SNACK, I didn't know this lake had smelts. It does have some very impressively sized crawdads and that's why I fish the tubes and jigs. When I saw these smelts I decided to match the hatch and the closest thing I could find was a Rapala suspending Husky jerk bait. I tied one on and on the fist cast caught a nice three pound smallie.

I played with different presentations. The water was on average 45 degrees so I thought a few good jerks with long pauses would work best and I did catch a few this way. However, I soon found out I actually did better by using my polarized glasses in the mix. I would cast out and do a quick retrieve with lots of jerks keeping a watchful eye on by bait. When my bait got within 15 yards of the boat I started seeing schools of big smallies chasing and swiping at the bait. I would then pause the bait and watch 6-10 bass sit and observe my lure. Then I would give it a small twitch or two and one of the bass in the school would loose their nerve and hammer the lure. It was just amazing. Looking back at the action and if it continues on tomorrow I think I am actually going to try some top water. I caught about 5 bass when my lure was just barely under the surface and the bass came up from underneath in about eight foot of water.

Here are the pictures, there may be some duplicates and we didn't take a picture of all the bass we caught we were too busy fighting the wind and catching bass.

[huskybass]

Great trip and report.  Congrats.  

[MaineBassMan]

Great trip and report. Congrats.

Thanks, My Great Uncle and I went back on the 20th and on his very first cast he caught this 4lbs even bass. He ended up taking the dollar that day, ($1 for biggest bass of the day), and we ended up catching 31 bass. Same thing again, all bass were in the high 2lbs range and a lot in the 3lbs range. Our five biggest bass on the 20th weighed in at 17lbs 10oz. Not as good as the 17th but still good to say the least. I would have taken more pictures but My Uncle can't operate a camera at all.