Species: Smallmouth Bass
Size: 13″
Lure used: white pearl super fluke
Date: 5/23/2009
Time: 1-4pm
Body of water: West Bearskin Lake
Location: Gunflint Trail, 30 mi North of Grand Marais, MN
Weather Conditions: sunny
My father-in-law, Ken, and I decided to head to a nearby lake to try for some smallmouth and lake trout. A few summers ago, we were in the Southwest arm and got so many hits on super flukes that we lost count about how many we caught. The problem was, they were all under 10″, so it got almost boring. We weren’t catching any of the big guys. We decided to hit that arm again and see if we could find some bigger fish in the huge rocks I remember seeing.
We fished the southern shore and I hooked a 13″ smallie right next to the dock of an old run down cabin. She was very fat (we found out later when we cleaned her that it was because she was full of eggs). It was a steep drop off there and we figure we were in about 12′ of water. It made sense that the fish were a little deeper because it was a very sunny day. We kept fishing the shore, but the sun was so high, there weren’t many shady spots for the fish to hide. The fish were likely in deeper water. Even the big rocks I remembered didn’t produce.
After a few hours in that arm, we opted to go deeper for some lake trout. We used small dipsy divers and spoons, but we didn’t get so much as a nibble. We guessed were were down about 12-15′ with the dipsy divers, but we heard later that Ken’s cousins were catching trout at about 26′. It would have been tough for us to get down that far with the canoe we were in.
Ken’s uncle’s family have a cabin on that lake and we’re hoping we can hitch a ride on their pontoon later this summer to do some lake trout fishing with their downrigger set up.
[…] first was a 13″ smallie that was as fat as the one I caught in the afternoon. Having felt guilty about the eggs earlier in the day, I opted to throw it back so I […]