| My First Smallmouth | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Part 2 - The Tournament and Weekend X Up North | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The next day was the first day of the NWC and Bob and I fished together. We went straight to the bridge where I had caught my only keeper the day before and I caught a 12 inch smallmouth on the Baby Brush Hog. It went back into the water since there is a 14 inch size limit on bass in Wisconsin. I soon started throwing a tube on a light spinning outfit spooled with 8 # PLine and caught a 16 inch keeper smallmouth. It fought fairly good but I was so excited about hooking it that I landed it as fast as I could get the net under it! That was the only keeper all day. We fished several places and I caught a bigger pike in some weeds. At the dam I did not catch a bass like the day before, but I did land a muskie, but that, again, is another story. I was shocked that afternoon at weigh-in to find my one bass was good for second place and big fish - Rob had two bass that weighed less together than my one. The next day I was paired with Shawn from Michigan. We went to the bridge but nothing was biting. After an hour we decided to try a place he had caught bass the day before and fished a rocky shoreline without any luck. When we got to a gap between an island and the bank we started getting hits and I caught some shore smallmouth on my drop shot rig and a Zoom 4 inch Dead Ringer. When that place played out with no keepers I tried to crank the boat to move but the battery was dead! We decided to fish that area the rest of the day since we could not run to other spots. We saw Steve and he said he had one good keeper and had lost another one, and thrown one back by mistake! He showed us the floating bog he was flipping and gave us some of the baits he was using. We tried that for a while and I caught one short bass, but it was a hard way to fish. Working back toward the gap where the fish had hit earlier, I threw my drop shot rig out on a point and a big fish hit it - I thought I had another pike until it jumped. A few heart pounding minutes later Shawn netted a 17 inch smallmouth for me. We hooked a trolling motor battery to the gas motor and cranked it with about 15 minutes left to fish and I caught one more short fish at the ramp. My smallmouth that day weighed 2.2 pounds on the tournament scales (2-14 on my scales) and I won t he tournament. Five people had one bass that day and Charles from Tennessee had two. He placed second. After driving to Van Vliet Lake the next day and meeting up with the group from this site, I went out with Tony and caught some largemouth. We heard the next day that nearby Crab Lake had smallmouth so we drove over to it and I caught about 35 smallmouth over the next few days, including one that Fritz had broken off. But that is still another story! My biggest smallmouth on Crab Lake was that one - a 18 inch beauty that pulled the scales down to 2-12. The smallmouth - and another 30 inch muskie - hit a 4 inch worm on a slider head and also the tube. Fritz had good luck fishing a Senko for them. Thee fish seemed to fight harder - maybe because I enjoyed the fight and did not try to land them as fast as possible. I like smallmouth. We have shoal bass here in Georgia as well as spotted bass, and both fight about as good as a smallmouth. Even so, I am looking forward to Weekend X Up North next fall and more smallmouth fishing! More of this article > Part 1 - Practice for the ROFB NWC Check out Coming Next Week - Next week's column topic, contest prize and new additions to the resources lists.
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