May bass fishing
Hey Ranger1982,
Did you end up fishing up at Winnie at the end of April? How'd you do?
I figured I'd check back and give a recent report.
My club had a small bass tournament on Saturday, May 10 launching out of Harilla Landing which is at the end of Long Island in the very central part of the lake. After launching, I immediate checked the water temperature. It was quite cool for this time of year averaging right around 51-53 degrees at the surface. At that water temp, the smallmouth should be thinking about moving up to spawn. So I started searching the spawning flates with suspending jerkbaits. The bite was pretty slow and the fish I did catch were on the smallish side. So I decided to fish deeper.
I moved off the flats and into deeper water next to them and started tossing blade baits (Silver Buddies - a great cold water bait) and immedately started catching better fish. I moved around quite a bit but never found that nice school of fish from which you can load the boat!
I ended up catching 15-18 fish from 1-3 pounds, all smallmouith. My two best (that I weighed in) came to just over 5 lbs, not great, but good enough for 3rd place and lunker SM (just under 3 pounds)
Most reported pretty slow catches, but a couple guys loaded the boat. One member reported catching 40+ smallies, but couldn't find the larger fish. He too caught them on blade baits.
With the warmer temperatures, the fish should head shallow very soon.
Good Luick!
Cheers....
Gusman
|