Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

If your asking why I am making a report from last year now its because Im really bored and tired of this winter. Anyways every year I make a few trips to Indian River and this year I decided to go with my father and Mike one of my good buddies and tournament partner. Neither has ever been to these lakes, Mike is new to northern smallie fishing and my father has never really been fishing before. I have been trying to get him to go on a trip with me for years and he finally wanted to go with. The fishing was not nearly as good as last year but still produced 15-30 4-6 pounders a day. My goal for this trip was different from previous years in that I just wanted my father to catch em and have a good time. He started out about as bad as you can by not having a hookset at all, he missed his first 8 fish on that first day including a giant. Although as the three days we were there progressed he improved by the hour and figured alot of important parts out and finally developed a decent hookset. His previous personal best which came from shore was 4-15 and he beat that the first day with a 5-5 then again the second day with a 5-13 and once again the last day with a 6-6 which was the biggest on the trip. Mike's biggest was 5-15, not sure what mine was but my most interesting fish was an 18 1/4 incher that weighed 5-4. Now that's a fattie! This made for a very rewarding trip to say the least.




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These photos are from an earlier trip in the month with your very own Jeff "guidemaster" Ragina. We also had a solid and always fun and adventurous trip. Think the biggest was a 6-1 I had.


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Wow those are some great fish.  Wish my first time out "real fishing" would have been a trip like that!  LOL!!  Your father is a lucky man.

Great pics and it's doubtful you could ever match the trip you had the last time. We go up every October as well and ended up going on the two worst days weather-wise and fish-wise we have ever had. Fortunately we had some decent luck on a west MI lake the day before we got there. Thanks for sharing the pics, it's therapy to get me through the winter!

Yeah this post is not helping my cabin fever.  Jeez- what pigs.  Nicely done gents. 

I've caught a few relatives of those really fat ones. There seems to be a gene pool of half football, half smallmouth bass in those lakes.