Sunday Fishing

It was looking as if the water temps would be into the 70's by May but as usual, mother nature got things back to normal and a small cold front came in last weekend and cooled things off. I was on the water Thursday and saw several smallmouth beds and had water temps near 60 degrees. I returned to that same lake Sunday morning with fellow club member Scott Hartman and here's what I found:

We launched at 9am and immediately saw about 7 smallmouth beds, more than on Thursday. The water temps had cooled to about 52 but I was amazed at the number of beds that had been made even with a cold front setting in. Most beds held small males which I believe make the beds and the big females come later. I did however find a few big fish and caught one that went 4.2 on the digital scales.

Thinking that most of the bigger females were hanging just outside of these areas, we moved to the first breaks and slightly deeper water and threw suspending jerkbaits but only caught small to barely keeper size fish. I know that's where the big females are at but for some reason can never catch them until they reach the beds. Most of my fish came on a rapala X-rap jerkbait and I believe Scott was throwing that as well. Probably caught about 15 fish and by 1pm the water had warmed up to 54 degrees.

I think with the warmer weather setting in this week that a lot of these lakes that contain smallmouth will have significant bedding activity for the catch and release opener which begins Saturday. I purposely did not name the lake I was fishing because I believe any lake that contains smallies will probably be in the same phase right now and they can be caught in several lakes around town.

I will probably be on Portage this weekend because I know I can catch bedding smallmouth but the lake also has a good population of largemouth as well. I have not fished spawning green fish very often and I think this would be a good place to practice that technique. I feel there may be some bedding largemouth on BawBeese and want to be ready if that is the case. I know several club members may be headed down to Hillsdale this weekend to start practicing and I will post any reports that I get. I will not personally start my practicing until about Tuesday of next week.

I will post directions to the lake in a day or two as soon as I can figure out the road names that I use. I can drive there but can't tell you the names of the roads. I usually take US - 12 to Jonesville and then go south on M - 99. This will go through the town of Hillsdale and spit you out on the south end of town. Keep on this road for about a mile then turn left just after the fairgrounds. The lake is about a 1/2 from there and another left is needed to get into the park. I will post better directions hopefully by Thursday.