Sunday Fishing

Fellow club member Mike Maske and I were able to get out today for a few hours and we managed to hit one of the fall hotspots mentioned here a few posts ago. One of Lake Erie's warm water discharge rivers near Monroe was our destination today and the fishing was quite good. The water temps on Erie were in the high 40's but the discharge area had water temps in the 70's. It was quite a chore getting in there with high winds and low water but well worth the effort.

There is so much activity in these areas with all the baitfish and bass surfacing and carp jumping, it's an awesome sight. Mike and I started with spinnerbaits and jigs but quickly found a deep diving crankbait to be the bait of choice. There is a lot of wood and laydowns in the river and several riprap areas so with the dirty water (about 18" visibility) a crankbait seemed to be the obvious choice.

My main weapon was an old Strike King Series 5 deep diver in a shad color and I found the fish were actually away from the bank and cover, sitting in 8-12 foot of water. Together we caught about 20 fish, 10 being keepers and our best five went about 13.5 pounds. Not huge but lots of fun and great for this late in the season.

Our big fish was a 3.7 lb. smallmouth I caught off a small point and then Mike later caught back to back fish that both went close to 3 lbs. on a Series 6 crankbait. We both also foul hooked carp that actually pulled the boat during the fight and we managed to get one of the monsters in the net. It was a great day and hopefully we'll be back before the lake ices up.