Well… I said the bass were biting, but unfortunately for many anglers up here right now, not many of them! After a slow start in our short evening Thursday albeit somewhat successful with cameraguy’s biggest smallie ever at 6.5 pounds, we looked forward to a sunny day with warming water. Normally a good thing this time of year.
cameraguy and I did some fishing early to no avail. Then we went to work (okay, he did most of the work) with his various cameras. I think we got some very interesting footage we’ll use later to entertain and maybe educate. We ran into genie and his partner Brett. We drove by Ryan and his dad. Talked to bender and Langer on the phone. No one was getting them much.
Finally, we fished up to an angler from Jackson I see up there most falls for a few years now and he asked me where the heck the bass where? Been out all morning without a bite. As soon as he said that and I told him my only for sure answer, “they’re somewhere between that shore there and that shore way over there” he hooked a nice bass off the side of a point on a tube. Then he caught another one on the next cast. And that was it! He said he was glad he asked me, but bummed that he ‘spooked the school.’
We moved on doing more taping and some fishing, trying to make something happen. I tried a rock bar that goes waaaayyy out into the lake that has had a few bass move onto it when things were tough in the past. I finally got a little 3-pounder on a tube just throwing it off the side of the rock bar. Felt good to get a bass finally after several hours. BUT… that was it again. No more bites. And genie tried to say he didn’t actually see the bass (I did get it on tape sort of though, you’ll see later).
We decided to try a little deeper. cameraguy was working hard with some specialized equipment and wanted to capture some bass so off we went to where he caught his 6.5 pounder. genie and Brett followed us to see what was going on. Minutes after we got there, a BIG smallmouth smashed by Xtreme Bass Tackle St. Clair Goby tube – a very good bait for me all year. After a brief fight with some head-shaking partial jumps, I boated another toad!
I figured it was pushing 5 pounds or so. Not catching many, but we are getting some toads. Typical of fall Michigan bass fishing. After we finished up getting some pictures of the big bass, I weighed her and was pleasantly surprised to find the beaty weighed 5 pounds 11 ounces! Now we’re talking…
But that was all the talking we were going to do this day, Friday October 10th 2008. I had to drop cameraguy off so he could head back to the ‘real’ world. As I headed back out, a bass boat came idling up honking and waving. I thought just to say hi, but no, an old tournament partner from a hundred years ago (well, really only about 20 or so) had spun his first hub while up on vacation – he’s retired. After a brief discussion on the theories of why the bass fishing was so slow, I ran his wife over to another boat ramp to pick up his trailer.
The off I went to figure out these 2008 fall bass. I don’t think I figured them out… Not that the rest of the day wasn’t interesting. I went out deeper and found some huge schools of bait, but was unable to find any bass. I did pick up a new ‘buddy’ however.
What is really weird is that a loon would come this close to a boat… back in June, my BFL co-angler and I had a young-looking loon swim around and under my boat sometimes coming within 5 6 feet of the boat before swimming off. Usually coming up behind the boat. We did not want to hook this bird so it made casting more than a little challenging.
Well this loon looked like the same bird and did the same thing. It would dive under and swim only to pop up behind my boat of just off the side. Sometimes I could see it swimming by and other times I couldn’t figure out where it would pop up. I must have looked like I had a bobble-head!
Every now and then, the loon would pop up a ways off only to return again. It really seemed to like by Yamaha outboard because it would dive under and next thing I know I see it under water swimming right around my prop. Then it started swimming around the side of my boat and sometimes under it. Here’s a shot of the silly bird swimming right along the side of my Ranger near the trolling motor. You can just make out its body and feet kicking:
I would be looking out a ways around the boat and then look down and there’s the bird swimming under water right around my boat, looking up at me from several feet down. I guess it got tired and finally popped up a couple hundred feet away. But this loon doesn’t give up easily.
I ran about 1/8 mile to another point a little later. Drop the trolling motor. Turn and look behind me and there… has to be..? the same crazy loon swimming 10 feet behind my outboard?!? I had to go through the paces all over again to get the bird to move off. They swim really fast and can pop up where you least expect them. It actually almost hit my line at one point after I thought it had moved off only to see it swimming along the bottom right past my tube bait. When it surfaced, it actually left a trail of bottom sand/silt on the surface!
Despite the ‘help’ of this master angler, I never had another bite nor did I see any bass moving in. Guess I’m going out tomorrow to try something different. Probably a different lake.
Sacrilegious, I know…