A Practice Round 6/12/12

I had received a tip that the smallmouth were hitting on top.  I had been focusing on largemouth as I was heading out to Minnesota the end of June, and I planned on catching lots of smallies there.  Still, smallmouth on top sounded too good to pass up.  When I arrived, it was sunny and glassy calm.  I started fishing a River2sea Bubble Pop 65.  I didn't get much luck, so I tried lipless cranks, spinnerbaits, squarebills, soft plastic craws, all with little to show for it.  I finally caught a couple of fish on a nose hooked soft jerkbait.  They were dinks, and I missed many more than I caught.  I finally caught a decent one on the popper tight to the bank. 

I caught a couple more dink smallies and a green sunfish on the jerkbait.  I reached a point, and just then the wind kicked up.  I worked my way up the bank, with more of the same.  I hooked something large on a Lucky Craft LV100, but it pulled loose before I got a look at it.  I snagged the crank on some discarded line in the water.  All the racket I made trying to shake it loose attracted a nice sized trout of around 18".  It had a look and then turned tail.  I had never seen a trout there before, so that was a surprise.  I decided to try a medium diving crank in a crayfish pattern.  I cast it parallel to shore, and a decent fish smacked it off the surface before I even started the retrieve.

I continued on, and in a promising looking area, I decided to try my fly rod.  I had it rigged up with a perch colored wiggle minnow.  I had never fished this pattern before, but I was impressed with its wiggling, rolling action as I twitched it across the surface.  Apparently the bass were too.

I had a flurry of action with fish crushing the fly.  Some of them even went aerial on the strike.  After ten or fifteen minutes of non stop action, it ended.  I continued on, picking up fish here and there.  I reached a submerged point that is usually really good when the wind blows, but apparently the fish didn't get the memo that day.  I picked up one small bass on the lipless crank, and that was it.  While I was in the shallows, I did notice an encouraging site.

There were thousands of smallmouth fry all over the area.  Oddly enough, no angry dads were in the area.  Just past the point I had a few more hits on the wiggle minnow.  I tried a Yo Zuri Swisher on one of my spinning rods, and the fish liked it for a bit.

It was time to head back.  I had a couple of good blowups on the Swisher, and a couple of smallbass and a sunfish took it as I worked my way back to the car.  I stopped by the river on the way down the canyon.  The water was high, murky and mossy, but I managed another bass or two on a pearl swimbait.  I was quite disgusted by the trash strewn about, and the flattened foot long trout with a boot imprint across it.  This place seems to attract the white trash for some reason.  I think I'll take a break from it for a bit.

Total for trip:  31 smallmouth. 2 green sunfish

Total for year:  714 fish