Another new lake
Well, the slow start to the guide season has been a blessing to Gil and I.
We've fished together more this year than we have in the past two seasons
combined. And, it's been fun to test out some new waters.We tried one today that seemed worthwhile. It's a small lake north of
Rhinelander that we'd heard good things concerning the smallmouth
population. We got a late start, and didn't hit the water until noon. I was a little
concerned when I saw the water clarity. It was extremely clear water, and I
could see clearly the bottom in 19 feet! On a bluebird day, without a cloud
in the sky, clear water wasn't what I really wanted to see. I thought that with the bright sun, that there might be fish tucked under
the boat docks that lined the shore, and we picked up some fish here and
there, but nothing consistent like I would have suspected. I couldn't find
any weed growth, but there was some VERY fast breaking shorelines and wood
in the water. I tried slow rolling some spinnerbaits, letting it bump across the bottom,
but didn't draw a strike either. I figured that this might be a low light
lake, good only on cloudy days or early/late in the day. But, seeing's how
we were already there, we'd give it a little more effort. We T-rigged up some various soft plastics, craws, reaper tails and baby
brush hogs and starting fishing deeper. Then we started to get bit, and
quite often. Chartreuse, pumpkinseed or watermelon worked best, but I did get some bites
on a red metalflake baby brush hog. The largest fish of the day came on a Reaper tail, but the craw got the most
consistent results. The retrieve that seemed to work best was simply throwing the lure into
about 6 feet of water and dragging it over logs whenever possible. The
smallies were tucked in and under the logs and would take the bait as it
fell off the log. The bites weren't jarring strikes. Most of the time, all you'd feel was a
little extra weight. But, if you didn't set the hook anytime you felt
something different, you weren't catching fish. As an experiment, Gil fished the back of the boat using one of my rods,
rigged with 10 pound PowerPro and I fished the same rod with a premium
monofilament line. I know a lot of guys that feel PowerPro is inappropriate for clear waters
because of the visibility of the line. It didn't seem to bother these
smallmouth as Gil was landing as many (if not more) fish as I was using a
clear line. Like I said, this was gin clear water, bottom clearly visible in
18-19 feet. The thing that I didn't like was that I know I was missing fish that I
didn't feel. Man, what a fun day! All in all, we landed somewhere between 2 and 3 dozen
smallies between 2 and 4 pounds, all in less than 6 hours. Some pictures are at: http://www.outdoorfrontiers.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=My_eGallery&file=index&do=showgall&gid=2 |
