During my last two weeks on the water, the dog days of summer prematurely turned to early autumn as waves of coldfronts hammered the north, lowering our warm 80 degree surface temperatures from the first week of the month by as much as ten degrees or more. The fishing has remained good to very good for bass, and even improved for muskies despite short windows all relating to weather fronts or moon phases. I’ve covered 15 more lakes since my last writing and here’s all that’s been happening from my neck of the woods.
As I had written in my last report from August 3rd, the deep and clear lake theory for late summer has fared best for my trophy smallmouth bass pursuits. During the heat of summer, the deepest clearest waterbodies I can find and catch fish from generally have the best and most consistent bites for me. In the last week I’ve spent more time on these large, deep waters than anywhere else; spending time with lake-learn mapping sessions, meticulously covering water and vast acreage. Unlike my first week, I focused more on trophies rather than numbers, but on some of these big fish waters I did enjoy 15 to 30 fish outings with specimens of all sizes. Making me believe they do contain more action than one would believe.
With the recent and much needed cooldown, there was no longer a need to fish early or late, though some good bites were still present at the right spots at the right time. Patterns had changed, however, and the best feeding windows for me turned to the late morning and mid afternoon hours as the sun began warming the lakes back up once again.
Topwaters and surface lures had dominated earlier in the month but with changing weather patterns came a change in my lure selections. Fish began tuning more into crankbaits, suspending jerkbaits, swimming grubs, jig worms, and crawfish imitators – all of which are more of early June selections rather than end of summer. On calm days and evenings, the fun surface bites still existed as quality fish were found but fewer, and tube jigs fished deep along offshore flats and extensions, and deep rock bars were taking several nice fish daily up to 21 inches.
^Ciscoes and smallmouths.
On most days, I’ve greatly relied on my electronics to locate fish. For most ideal spots, if I didn’t see anything marked along the edges or anywhere within the vicinity, I bypassed those areas until something was found. For example, pictured above is what I located on my August 4th trophy hunt. Wolfpacks of smallmouths were corralling schools of ciscoes along the edges of mid lake flats. Extracted from one of the schools was my largest and heaviest fish of the season so far, a 21 incher that was built like a linebacker. No guess on weight (somewhere between 5 and 7 pounds), but it made my hands hurt following this photo below. It’s my fifth 21 incher of the year and PB from this particular lake. Smallies in general love contour. In my opinion, the more contour a lake has, the better the smallmouth bass fishery might be. On this large complex lake I proved myself correct.
I caught more nice fish up to 20 inches on this trophy hunt too.
Additionally to these fish, a number of other fish were taken from down deep as well, but for other specific reasons. During the autumn months of September and October, many of my smallmouth bass lakes experience a migration of yellow perch (mostly young of year) as they will school up in masses along deeper weedlines. Smallmouths and other bass then follow suit. It seemed as if this particular lake I fished on last week forgot which month it was, as we’re about a full month ahead of schedule for this to occur. But the schools were found where they should be in midst of the massive coldfronts and the cooldown we had, and some sizeable fish were found nearby. Strike King Coffee Tubes with small jig inserts and Northland Impulse jigworms extracted them.
Besides the deeper bites, topwaters in the walk-the-dog and popper variety have still been productive during flat calm, high pressure weather situations and evening hours.
The topwater bite has been best during evenings and early nighttime hours, 7pm to 9pm and sometimes later. There hasn’t been a need to fish into darkness like it was required earlier in the month since the cooldown and coldfront periods took place. Best areas have been rock reefs and large sand bars extending into the deepest basins of lakes. Reeds with nearby hard bottom and deep sand have also contained fish. As the sun sets, I’ve observed fish surfacing and feeding deeper (on surface) out in the 15 to 20 foot depth ranges. Then as nightfall comes near, to pitch black conditions beginning at 9pm, fish are feeding and setting up shallow, in 5 feet or less.
On some evenings I’ve caught as many as 10 fish on one single spot while others have been devoid. It could be luck of the draw I guess, so choose your primetime hour spots wisely and plan out a milk run to maximize opportunity. I haven’t used any other topwaters or surface lures besides Rapala X-Rap Pops and I’ve had trouble putting it down in favor of anything else. This bite will still be in play through early September barring any major coldfronts or premature cooldowns.
Below is a 20 incher along with other nice ones taken with the POP.
Besides the aforementioned presentations and their stellar results, the traditional late summer crankbait pattern finally materialized in this last week. The cooldown finally got it going again as fish were present wherever the invasive rusty crayfish was present. This unique bite is here to stay until early fall when crayfish will begin their migrations back into deep water. Over the weekend I experienced a great crankbait bite on my waters with a variety such as the the Rapala DT 6 and Crankin Rap worked with casting gear, and much lighter and smaller Bandit 100’s which I work with medium heavy spinning gear and keep a looser drag. When I’m dialed in with the crankbait feed I like to keep a few rods rigged and ready and most of the time this bite will take place in depths of 10 feet or less. Last year at this time both were relating to weedlines and shallow grass. But this time it was on sand flats with very little rock or hard bottom.
During these last few weeks I’ve also explored new waters and added 5 new lakes into my rotation. One of which was a backwoods gem located off the beaten path. It contains an access area but was virtually unusable by boat for these last several years due to drought. I was finally able to fish it for the first time ever. I had no idea what its quality of fishery was like but according to friends it had ‘some’ smallies in there. In two short hours of learning this quiet 150 acre backwoods lake, I came away impressed by catching 20 fish of all sizes which included tanks at 19 and 20 inches. Fish were viciously hammering everything thrown at them as if they had never seen lures before. This little gem was fished twice, resulted in one friend’s personal best, and will be visited for years to come when I want to get away from others. It’s in the woods, and uninhabited by man. Gets no better than that!
So in the last three weeks, the bass fishing has been incredible for August standards, and it was difficult to leave it in order to briefly return to Chicago this week, and then travel to Rainy Lake Ontario for next week. My next up north bass extravaganzas won’t take place next until middle to late September.
Oh crap, and I started kayak fishing also. Plan on acquiring an inexpensive sit-on model to combat the muskies of my small nearby streams that are inaccessible by boat.
And if it’s of importance to anyone, I finally caught my first musky in nearly two months; a dinky 35 incher. Whoopee….. I’ll save these guys till October and November. Until then, I’m bass fishing hard, on my personal monster quest.
End Notes –
If anyone wants information on lakes or has questions for me concerning the north, I’ll be more than happy to help anyone out. When I get the new boat at season’s end, I am contemplating on starting an “experimental” guide service for the 2015 season. Give me a shout anytime through my sites at www.ragasfishing.com and www.fishing-headquarters.com
