Bass Opener Sunday 5/27/07

No skunk for me. My only Larry of the day.

Solid Smallie caught on our first reef. 18"+!!!

2nd and last smallie followed quickly on the heals of the first. (I think this is the same fish as the first pic.)

The Story: I met "Shake" Michael "Cyberfish" Thompson and "Bake" Jack Halverson at the Wahkon Park access just after 10am. It was cool bright and sunny with a brisk wind out of the NW; the wind would diminsh throughout the day, thank goodness. Upon boat launch we headed a short ways West of the launch and anchored due to the wind. Shake had hammered the panfish in this spot the previous weekend. I was fishing the reeds for Largemouth Bass with a white swim jig and Chart/White Spinnerbait. Shake and Bake were fishing panfish plastics under bobbers trying for monster Crappies and Gills. Bake got on the board first with a 10" Crappie. Neither Bake nor Shake could follow that fish up with anything. For the next couple of hours we worked ourself East along the reed bed anchoring up because of the wind; During this time Mike caught a little perch and one small bass and I got the Largemouth pictured above with the swim jig. I did miss two strikes on the swim jig, one probably from a bass and the other from a dogfish right under the boat. The fishing was not happening in the shallows at all, so we tried out a little bit farther; the wind had layed down significantly by now. On the trip farther out we saw a big smallie, but that was about it.

With the wind down we decided to hit some reefs out by Half Moon and the Twin Islands. It didn't take long and I landed a big 18"+ smallie on the Chart/Wht spinnerbait (pic above). Shortly after that fish I landed another smallie that was a little smaller. Shortly after that Bake landed a nice smallie and we thought we were off to the races. We worked the reef for another hour to hour and a half without getting anything. We tried the reef running West from Upper Twin and got nothing there. We headed back in to Wahkon to see if the panfish had moved in shallow with the warm sun and less wind. Mike caught 1 crappie and a couple of perch, but that was it. We decided to pull out and give Isle Bay a try.

Isle Bay showed us some sight fish: a couple of big muskies, 1 crappie, 1 Dogfish. We didn't catch anything. We then tried the Malone Island Reef for some smallies and got nothing. We tried one reef farther out than called it quits around 8:30PM. All in all a very slow day, but I was happy due to the two nice smallies I caught.

So basically I caught more and bigger bass than Cyberfish.

Memorial Day 5/28/07 Bordon Lake

The fish that made it all worthwhile, 18"+ Smallie!!!

The Story: Once again I was to be fishing with "Shake" Michael "Cyberfish" Thompson and "Bake" Jack Halverson. The plan from the night before was to hit Bay Lake. However, we made a last minute decision at Tutt's Bait to give Bordon Lake a go. So we ended up going to Bordon flying by the seat of our pants/no lake map. As we launched the boat it started to drizzel and by our first stop it was raining with a SE wind. We hit a hump/rock pile somewhere on the western side of the lake. This spot produced a small largemouth for me on a spinnerbait and a pumkinseed for Bake on panfish plastics. After giving this spot a fair amount of effort we headed to the Western Shore line where a steep break abutted some reeds. We tried in shallow and got nothing. Along the break Bake nailed a couple of nice 12" to 14" largemouth. Shake switched to a watermelon tube and started catching 12" to 14" largemouth. We worked our way North along this reed/weed breakline with Mike catching largemouth on a steady basis. Jack struggled for panfish and I cast spinnerbaits, Flukes, Frenzy Poppers, and RattleRaps all to no avail. Finally up by the point that leads into the Western arm of the lake Jack got a single Crappie. We fished the point which had a steep break and Shake nailed several bass on the tube while Bake hit a Jack fish (Pike). We worked our way around the point along the Southern shore of the Western Arm. Mike picked up a rock bass and a couple of more larry's and that was it, I switched to a tube and started catching largemouth too. At this point the sun had come out a little bit and it was starting to warm up. Working that Southern Shore of the Western arm I got a solid tap and the fight was on with the big fish of the day; the smallmouth pictured above.
The South shore started to be more weeds than inside weedline and we weren't getting anything so we switched to the Western arms North Shore. This shore was windblown and had beautiful weeds but we could not get a spinnerbait or rattlerap to go. Jack did catch one 9" crappie, but the sunfish and schools of crappie were nowhere to be found. Eventually Jack gave up and turned over boat control to me. We started hitting points on the North shore of the Western arm. Mike and I caught largemouth on most of the points and Mike even got a 15-16" smallie. The day started to warm up significantly and the wind started to blow. Bake really wasn't into fishing and so we called it a day at about 2:30PM. The size of the Largemouth wasn't big but they provided a fair amount of action and the big smallie once again made my day.

Cyb got the numbers, I got the big bass.