6/27/07:
Today was a very special day on Paw Paw Lake. I had the
best 45 minutes of fishing that I've ever
experienced. There were a couple of fronts passing by today and
the big bass were very active. I was drop shotting a hump in 24
ft of water when the bass bonanza began. My first keeper was a 3
pound chunky largemouth that had bait fish falling out of its
mouth. On my second cast a huge 4.5 pound largemouth took my AA
Worm and fought for its life. It jumped 3 times and pulled like a
bull. My third cast yielded a fat 3.5 pound smallie that I
thought was going to be a 5-6 pound largemouth. Man!
12 pounds in three casts.
The bite slowed down for about 10 minutes when another pod of active fish moved onto my structure. A huge bass buckled my Shimano Drop shot rod and ran towards the surface. A monsrous smallie skied out of the water. It dug and pulled for 6 minutes. Finally I had it in my hands, it was a beautiful 5 pound Paw Paw Lake smallie. That put me at 17 pounds. On my next cast I caught another smallie that wasn't quite as impressive and only weight 2 pounds. I ended the greatest 45 minutes I've ever experienced with a little over 19 pounds of bass.
6/23/07: Magician Lake was the venue for the second NBAA Singles tournament. I spent the whole tournament skipping docks and fishing shallow. I caught four keepers in the first two hours including a couple of 3 pound fish. I fished hard for the next 4 hours and had a couple of nice bass come off by the boat but I never did land my fifth bass. I was pretty diappointed in myself. I ended up getting third place with 9.5 pounds and big bass with a 3.7 pound largemouth. John Gipson Jr. won again with a nice 10.99 pound sack.
6/21/07: Kelly and I fished an NBAA Division 8 tournament on Paw Paw Lake tonight and we did ok. We mainly targeted green weeds in deep water because they recently did a weed kill and the water was gross. Kelly caught two chunky keepers right away so she was excited. I caught our third keeper right behind her two with a crankbait. The rest of the night we could only manage to get short fish to bite. We ended up getting fourth place with just under 7 pounds. Ron and Randy Nelson came in first place with 10 pounds and Lieberg and Ohst won big bass.
6/19/07: We didn't fish today because the water temperature dropped 20 degrees over night and the lake is now 51 degrees. I was surprised I didn't see Icebergs.
6/18/07: Kelly and I headed north for our annual big smallie bananza, but it turned into a numbers game this year.
We chose to hit up the East Arm of Traverse Bay for the
day. The
weather forecast called for 30-40 Mph SW winds so we could only fish
the southwest corner of the bay because of the huge wind driven
waves. The water temp was 69 degrees in the shallows and the bass
were spawning on any grass patch, boulder, or log they could
find. There were literally hundreds of beds. I was like a
kid in a candy store. The only problem was being able to cast on
the beds with the strong wind.
I decided to drive as far south as I could and let the
wind
push me by the beds. At best I had one cast to each bed before
the wind pushed my by. I was using small crayfish imitation
bait on a small 1/8 oz jig head, tied onto 6 pound Gamma
Fluorocarbon. I would make a long cast with the wind onto a dark
spot, reel as fast as I could to catch up to my bait, then set the
hook. Sometimes there was a bass there, other times there wasn't,
more times than not there was though. I ended up catching 40-50
males on one pass across a 300 yard flat. It was a blast to say
the least. I actually had a sore arm from reeling in
smallies. My best five only weighed 15 pounds but it was still
fun.
experienced. There were a couple of fronts passing by today and
the big bass were very active. I was drop shotting a hump in 24
ft of water when the bass bonanza began. My first keeper was a 3
pound chunky largemouth that had bait fish falling out of its
mouth. On my second cast a huge 4.5 pound largemouth took my AA
Worm and fought for its life. It jumped 3 times and pulled like a
bull. My third cast yielded a fat 3.5 pound smallie that I
thought was going to be a 5-6 pound largemouth. Man!
12 pounds in three casts. The bite slowed down for about 10 minutes when another pod of active fish moved onto my structure. A huge bass buckled my Shimano Drop shot rod and ran towards the surface. A monsrous smallie skied out of the water. It dug and pulled for 6 minutes. Finally I had it in my hands, it was a beautiful 5 pound Paw Paw Lake smallie. That put me at 17 pounds. On my next cast I caught another smallie that wasn't quite as impressive and only weight 2 pounds. I ended the greatest 45 minutes I've ever experienced with a little over 19 pounds of bass.
6/23/07: Magician Lake was the venue for the second NBAA Singles tournament. I spent the whole tournament skipping docks and fishing shallow. I caught four keepers in the first two hours including a couple of 3 pound fish. I fished hard for the next 4 hours and had a couple of nice bass come off by the boat but I never did land my fifth bass. I was pretty diappointed in myself. I ended up getting third place with 9.5 pounds and big bass with a 3.7 pound largemouth. John Gipson Jr. won again with a nice 10.99 pound sack.
6/21/07: Kelly and I fished an NBAA Division 8 tournament on Paw Paw Lake tonight and we did ok. We mainly targeted green weeds in deep water because they recently did a weed kill and the water was gross. Kelly caught two chunky keepers right away so she was excited. I caught our third keeper right behind her two with a crankbait. The rest of the night we could only manage to get short fish to bite. We ended up getting fourth place with just under 7 pounds. Ron and Randy Nelson came in first place with 10 pounds and Lieberg and Ohst won big bass.
6/19/07: We didn't fish today because the water temperature dropped 20 degrees over night and the lake is now 51 degrees. I was surprised I didn't see Icebergs.
6/18/07: Kelly and I headed north for our annual big smallie bananza, but it turned into a numbers game this year.
We chose to hit up the East Arm of Traverse Bay for the
day. The
weather forecast called for 30-40 Mph SW winds so we could only fish
the southwest corner of the bay because of the huge wind driven
waves. The water temp was 69 degrees in the shallows and the bass
were spawning on any grass patch, boulder, or log they could
find. There were literally hundreds of beds. I was like a
kid in a candy store. The only problem was being able to cast on
the beds with the strong wind. I decided to drive as far south as I could and let the
wind
push me by the beds. At best I had one cast to each bed before
the wind pushed my by. I was using small crayfish imitation
bait on a small 1/8 oz jig head, tied onto 6 pound Gamma
Fluorocarbon. I would make a long cast with the wind onto a dark
spot, reel as fast as I could to catch up to my bait, then set the
hook. Sometimes there was a bass there, other times there wasn't,
more times than not there was though. I ended up catching 40-50
males on one pass across a 300 yard flat. It was a blast to say
the least. I actually had a sore arm from reeling in
smallies. My best five only weighed 15 pounds but it was still
fun.6/17/07: Today was Father's Day so my father, Mike and I went on our normal fishing trip. I chose to take him
onto Lake Michigan and show him first hand the smallies I've been
bragging about catching on the big pond. The smallies have been
on fire lately, and spawning. We launched from Brian's Marina and
made our way to the Lake at 7:00 am. We targeted cruising fish
early in 15 feet of water using tubes. I caught a toad on my
first cast and while I was reeling her in three other smallies
followed. She fought hard and jumped like a porpoise. We
saw a bunch of fish swimming around but didn't catch anymore.
As the sun got higher in the sky we started to sight fish bedding smallies on rock bars in 10-15 feet of water. I let my old man catch most of the smallies we saw on beds. They were very aggressive often biting the lure on it's decent. We ended up catching five chunky lake smallies in 2 hours before we called it a day. I must say we had an absolute blast.
6/13/07: I had to fish an NBAA tournament at Fish, Finch, and Saddlebag alone tonight because my wife wasn't feeling well. I started the afternoon fishing docks on Saddlebag Lake but I didn't get a bite, maybe because I snagged every dock I skipped under. There were still a lot of gills on beds so tried fishing like I did on Diamond Lake. I was casting a Senko around the gill beds trying to catch largemouths that were cruising through. I caught a couple keepers and 20 dinks doing this. Although I could only manage two keepers I still had a great time catching bass after bass, even though they were short.
I'm not sure who won but they had five bass that went over 10 pounds. Nice Job! Lieberg and his partner (I keep forgetting his name) won big bass with a 4 pounder. Congrats to everyone who won a little bit of change.
6/9/07: Diamond Lake was the venue for the first NBAA Singles tournament. It was a chilly morning that slowly turned into a sunny, hot day. There were 9 boats that showed up to battle the bass on Diamond Lake. I started the day skipping docks and ended the day skipping docks. I skipped docks for 6 strait hours. My mind was numb after the tournament. I only managed to catch 3 bass that were over 14 inches. Two of them came from underneath the same dock. There was a male and a huge female still spawning on a rock pile under a dock. I threw under the dock and the female ate it instantly. She almost wrapped me around a pole but came in easily. She weighed in at 4 pounds even. The male hit on the nest cast but he was only a pound and a half. I caught countless numbers of short fish after that.
Well I ended up getting second place with 7.5 pounds. John Gipson Jr. caught a very impressive sack bringing in 10.5 pounds. I also narrowly won big bass with my 4 pound largemouth. Single events are a lot of fun and everyone should come out and try one.
6/7/07: Kelly and I fished an NBAA tournament on the "Joe" tonight and we had a great time. There were about 18 boats that fished the 3 hour tournament. We fished for postspawn smallies most of time with small jigs. In our first spot we caught 2 nice keepers right away but I also lost two that wrapped me around poles. In our second spot I caught 2 more keepers right away but they were only small 14 inch fish. I also had a couple bigger 3-4 pound smallies come of on the first jump from this spot. Well we only ended up catching 4 keepers and losing at least 4 more keeper. We weighed just under seven pounds and took home the fifth place tackle pack.