Great Lakes Bass Fishing Forum

Anybody been on Kent lately? Need a fishing report going to spend the day fishing Thursday.
Thanks
Stack

Jerkbaits were producing well in the morning in 6 feet of water.  We were using perch pattern X raps and LC POinter 100s in Ghost Minnow.  Once the clouds rolled in, the jerkbait bite died down.  But we managed to bag 5 nice smallmouth in about 20 minutes while the bite was hot.  Add a pike to that and a lost smallie and it made for some quick action.

We struggled for a bit after that.  We tried jigs, traps, cranks, and spider grubs.  Didnt find any bass, but i got on a good pike pattern that lasted a few minutes and produced 2 decent sized and one very large pike.  In the end, he broke free at the boat and stole my favorite trap.

About an hour later, after drifting the channel with jerkbaits with no results, i hooked into another jerkbait fish on a mainlake point.  Another smallmouth, very skinny and sickly looking with scrape marks on his head.  Wierd looking fish.  We tried this point with jerkbaits for another 45 minutes with no action.  Moved around a little more without finding anything.  Decided to return to the point where i had caught our last fish and try to figure it out.  I grabbed a prototype bait that ive been working on and rigged it on a 1/4 oz football head and casted out.  I immediatly felt decent sized rocks and not long after had a fish slam my offering.  Set the hook and faught a nice 3 lb fish to the boat.  Next cast to the same area produced the same results, and i put another 3lber in.  And wouldnt you know it, a hatrick on the next cast.  3 casts, 3 fish, 9 lbs.  The next casts almost made it all the way back to the boat, and as i started reeling in i felt a good snap on the other end of the line, but i set the hook and missed.  I reeled in nothing but the football head.  I lost my hot bait and had no more with me.  So i bummed a 5" hula grub off my partner and got back to it.  The hula grub was met with similar, but not identical results.  I got a couple real good slams on it, but the fish werent hagning on.  We both managed to stick a fish on the hula grubs, but we missed many hits.  Funny how they were engulfing that prototype, but just swatting at the hula grub. 

After putting together what exactly happened when i lost that bait, i thought maybe they wanted something a little more aggressive.  That fish never hit til i started cranking my rig back to the boat.  So i switched up to a DT 10 and started cranking.  It was awesome to feel that bait bouncing off all the stuff down there.  As it turns out, the rocks that i initially thought only covered a small area stretched out quite a ways farther and there were stumps scattered throughout.  Unfortunatly i never got bit on the crankbait, but did manage to locate a small cluster of wood that produced our last fish of the day on the hula grub.

It was very cold sunday.  Water temps were 39 in the morning and warmed to 41/42 by 4 pm.  I thought the fish would be a little more aggressive as the day went on but instead they seemed to slow down.  The longer we paused out jerkbaits in the morning the more bites we got.  Which worked out well as it allowed ample time to warm the hands.  Later, all but one hit came deadsticking baits on the bottom.  Hope i can get back out there soon.  It used to be a thanksgiving tradition to fish kent lake in the morning and end up being an hour late to dinner, but after missing out last year, and no mention of a trip this year, i think the tradition is over.

McCarter himself :-\'