Champlain to Erie

Again I want to thank all of you for your kind words and support while I was in NY. What a derby. Beautiful setting, great fishing, huge smallmouth which were eager to eat. This was my first experience going after northern smallmouth and I feel like I learned quite a bit regarding natural lakes, I guess I will get to try and prove that next week on Erie.

I can tell you now what 'big' water is. I thought I had some kind of definition in my head as to what a rough lake was and well, I was wrong. If you go to the great lakes or anything like that, ask questions, do your research, utilize the internet to gather as much information as you can about how to be properly equipped and how to contact help if you need it. A 5 blade prop may indeed save your life.

So, moving on to lake Erie, this again will be an opportunity to get on some smalljaws but there is a difference in how this derby will unfold unlike Champlain. Many more anglers will be going after smallmouth where in NY at least half the field were splitting efforts between largemouth and smallmouth. I really think that helped me in NY. I am not saying you cannot get on a LM bite on or around Erie but the better fish in numbers and size are said to be SM. Lots of territory available around Detroit, Erie, St Clair, the Detroit and St Clair rivers are all in play so this will tend to 'stretch' the field. There surely will be one day where Erie will get to big to get on so the remaining areas will fish a bit smaller but still, that is a huge area. Current will also be guiding factor for some and I hope some of my Delta experience will help me find some of the ambush points available to those fish in the rivers.

I'm very excited to get up there.

I will post some pics of what I find.

Champlain Practice - Mike H

I love to get on waters I have only read about, it's just cool to even be here on Champlain. When I think about it I believe that this is the first real natural lake I may have ever fished in my life and well, it is a little different. I have spent the last two days trying to find a way to really fish my strengths without making the 60-70 mile trip one way to the skinny south part of the lake even though the AFS derby was won there yesterday or that's what I hear. I guess I will hold that as a contingency plan IF we get fair weather allowing me to make the trip. I feel like it is a big risk to put a plan together there simply because you never know if you are going to be able to get there and back. I have looked at some 'riverish' spots way up north by the Canadian border and really only found a couple three good largemouth, not much but something, good here is 3.5 lbs and better. Today the lake is supposed to be flatter and I plan on going and finding a place to get 5 brown fish for a limit and then expand on the green fish thing if I can. I know LM are the way to win here and I really want to put a milk run together fish SM early and LM the rest of the day hoping for a couple of kickers. Inland sea needs to turn on for my plan to come together.

Thinking about Champlain, Mike Haggerty

As the northern circuit starts to look me square in the face, I have to change gears here and try and prepare for some unfamiliar lakes and techniques. Love it.... I have to try and wrap my head around an entirely new set of standards regarding northern BIG reservoirs ie Champlain and probably St Claire. A lot of new questions are running through my head, a lot of unknowns for me logistically as well as strategically. What's the forage? What do the crawfish look like? Can you make the run on Champlain from launch to the mats and back on one tank of gas? How does the wind set up predominately? How big is the water in bad weather? How do you effectively stay on 'pelagic' smallies day after day? Can I use my electronics well enough to be effective in open water? Where do I pull up to in a high wind situation? Am I versatile enough? I could go on for a while here but you get my point. I've been told time and again that a bass is a bass is a bass but..........., I drink that coolaid a bit too but we all know a lake Erie smallie acts a whole lot different than a G'ville largemouth. My experience level here is pretty low but at least I don't have any bad habits right? This will be a huge learning experience for me regardless and that fact alone makes it worth it. If I have learned anything up to now, there is no substitute for time behind the wheel on as many different lakes as you can muster, period. If you plan to succeed, you gotta catchem everywhere any time. I am really looking forward the challenges that are in front of me but I would be a liar if I said I was not a little intimidated as well.

Confusion at Ouachita - Mike H

Boy how a couple days can bring about such massive changes in a fishes behavior. First two days I was here I was just kind of looking around searching for bites here or there, caught a ton of fish on a squarebill and trap and whatever else I decided to throw at them, found a bunch of fish on the north side cruising for bedding sites with even a few locked kinda, conditions looked real promising. A mild cold front passed yesterday early and even after that I was able to scrounge up a small limit X 2 just finessing and re running a few spots I like from the day prior. Today though was a killer. I added Ricky T. to the back seat and neither of us could put a HALF limit together. Gonna have to take today as an 'off' day and go look around some more tomorrow. Up lake it seems a bit flatter, smaller and may not hold the population of fish as the central or eastern sections but it looks more like what I am used to seeing at home (hate to use that as a crutch but hey, it is what it is). I will look at the east section of the lake at least a half day and treat it like Amistad sans the huge swimmers, it is deep, steep and supposed to be clear, maybe I will run into some of this rumored clarity or GRASS. So far this lake lacks cover of almost any sort, lots of snot moss on the bottom, the occasional stump. I am going to start treating this a lot like a pure structure lake for sure but on a mini scale as the fish HAVE to be thinking spawn. They have to. Really. They do.

Amistad pre

Amistad is fishing pretty good right now with a multitude of patterns working. We have 4 boats down here right now and all of us are catching fish but maybe not the quality bite consistently, I guess that is relative to this lake but 3-4 lb class fish are abundant with a peppering of 4-6 lb class fish. There are a lot of fish bedding but also a lot of abandoned beds, I think the majority of the spawn is done but you can still get on some sight fishing bass. The hydrilla is still developing and most quality fish are not relating to the grass but wood in my opinion. Access to deep water seems to be the key and late in the day a lot of quality fish are moving up to wooded flats to feed along little migration routes from that deep water. Patience with a big swimmer can pay dividends in a big way, California Swim Babes - Hot Momma and Baby 'E' along with 3:16 - Rising Son are catching quality fish 6.5 to 9 lbs. How ever you want to fish, you can dial them in pretty good right now.

LOZ time is short

I have to think five straight days of low 40s air temps and drizzle with low hanging clouds have put the fish in a rather neutral mood. This place needs some sun and thats it. A 3 day warming trend would be nice but in mid MO, thats an unrealistic expectation in mid March. My practice strategy was to try and find a couple groups of fish getting ready to move in the direction of the shallows but that has been kinda miss and miss so the last day or so has really been about trying to find places where some of those fish may be moving to when the sun does show it's face and then try and get bit in those areas, even a nudge on a jig would tell a guy hey, we are here, we are just not active YET... What few fish I have caught would lead me to believe that they are further back towards the flats than most would think they would be including me, two to six feet of water around prepared brush piles and if you get any kind of rock transition in the vicinity that is a bonus. So, given the above to be my theory, I plan to junk fish those spots in areas with a variety of techniques in hopes of figuring what presentation the fish want on the fly, not ideal but it's what I got.

LOZ first couple days - Mike H

So my first derby of the year is on Lake of the Ozarks and it starts Thursday. My folks still live there, on the 1mm of the main lake so I was able to get some insight into what the lake is like and what the weather had been doing and the news has not been good. The lake froze over bank to bank this year and I don't think it has done that since I was a kid and I was told that coves had a sheet of ice on them just a couple weeks ago and the water temps confirm that. I measured 39 at the mouth of the Gravois, 41 at the mouth of the Glaize and 43 at the mouth of the Niangua but in the backs of the creeks yesterday, I saw high 40s and even a 50 deg reading 3/4 of the way back in the Niangua but where it is warm it is hella dirty, oh, the lake is also at least 6 ft low, alot of the shallow cover, ie crappie beds, are sticking halfway out of the water around the docks in the back of the creeks. Muddy warm water would tell a guy to look at the shallow cover hard and I have but had minimal results doing so. I have also looked real hard at typical structure spots ie creek channel bend coming close to the bank leading into spawning flats, rock transitions etc and had terrible luck there too. Now the weather has been crap, 39 deg air and rain this am and predicted to blow 20-25 but later in the week it IS supposed to stabilize some in the mid 50s and some sun...finally. I really think some fish will start to get active come mid week, I just need to scout enough spots where I believe those fish will move to and be RIGHT. A BFL is going off today and I will get to the weigh in to see how those guys faired, watch a bunch of heavy sacks get weighed and I will feel totally lost.