Big M area, April 1

[Quillback]

It's been a while since I fished over at Big M.  Got out at first light and fished until about 1:30 PM.  

A lot of bass up on the banks on beds and there are still some over deep water too.  I fished the Surge Shad early and picked up a few on it, had several that blew up on it but missed.  I then moved to a shallow cove that I thought would have some fish up shallow but didn't find any.  However, a little surface activity drew me out to the mouth of the cove where it was about 20 feet deep and I caught 10 or so on the Yammie Shibo swimbait.  First two casts with the Shibo resulted in 2 bass.  That Shibo kicks well and rolls at slow speed, made out durable plastic too.  I like it so far.

Once they stopped hitting the swim bait, I started working banks where I thought there would be bedding fish.  Used the ned rig and got many shallow bites.  Getting them hooked was tough, but with so many bites I was able to get some of them in the boat.  Mostly spotted bass, but caught my biggest, a 3 lb. largemouth, on the ned.  

I ended up with about 30 bass, 3 keepers.  Last fish of the day was a keeper sized walleye that was released.

WT 60-62

 

 

[Bill Babler]

Wow, that’s a great TR morning. Neighbor and I have been fishing around point 9 and the SM bite is really good on flat gravel. 
No beds surface temps at 57 but any day.  2.8” Keitech, Gizzard Shad  

Good buddy threw a RK Crawler around the 39 bridge at SK yesterday and caught them good.   Said he had 18 pounds with 3 at the 3.5/4 pound mark.  Said there was a lot of slime and 1/2 his casts didn’t work, but he’s stubborn and made it pay off big time. 

Great report. I’ll get up there next week. 

 

[Quillback]

There was some slime in a few places. I hate that stuff!

[Alex Heitman]

Nice trip! It seems like the slime has gotten worse over the last several years and I hate it because I love a good crank bait bite. 

[snagged in outlet 3]

This year is the first time I've encountered slime around our dock.   Don't know if it's associated, but it's also one of the few times I've never caught a fish off the dock too...

[Bill Babler]

You would think to associate it with warm water but that’s not the case at all. It’s a cold water early Spring deal and really has been for the last 10 plus years. 
It will all be gone by May 1st.  
If we get a big warm rain or the lake comes up it could be gone in a week. 
I need to get my jig on the bottom so I’m hoping sooner rather than later. 

[Champ188]

20 hours ago, Alex Heitman said:

Nice trip! It seems like the slime has gotten worse over the last several years and I hate it because I love a good crank bait bite. 

Didn't know you even owned a crank bait. Bet you don't have any DD22's. 😂

[Bill Babler]

Seems like I can remember some big ole fish both Alex and his dad graced us with on either a wart or a RK Crawler. 
More than once. 
I would bet he knows what end of the bait to tie his line to. 

Steven made it down and we hit the water and fished from 3:30 till 6 pm. 
Wind was perfect and we simply hammered the SJaws   In that short period of time we had 4 doubles and over 20 fish. Only had 3 K’s,  no LM all the rest mostly male smallmouth. 

The color of the fish was amazing, just beautiful. Dark with black/green stripes and eyes as red as fire. 

All but one on the little Keitech and Steve caught it on a jig. I missed a really good fish at the boat on a 5.5” Magdraft. 

[snagged in outlet 3]

4 minutes ago, Bill Babler said:

Seems like I can remember some big ole fish both Alex and his dad graced us with on either a wart or a RK Crawler. 
More than once. 
I would bet he knows what end of the bait to tie his line to. 

Steven made it down and we hit the water and fished from 3:30 till 6 pm. 
Wind was perfect and we simply hammered the SJaws   In that short period of time we had 4 doubles and over 20 fish. Only had 3 K’s,  no LM all the rest mostly male smallmouth. 

The color of the fish was amazing, just beautiful. Dark with black/green stripes and eyes as red as fire. 

All but one on the little Keitech and Steve caught it on a jig. I missed a really good fish at the boat on a 5.5” Magdraft. 

Those smallies in The Rock are the darkest I’ve ever seen.   I caught some that were almost black.  
 

[Bill Babler]

We had some durn near that color snagged.  We also had a couple of Caramel color with black stripes. 
You can expand the picture of Steven and really see that beautiful color. 
That was one of the few sows we caught. Mostly 14/16 inch slim males. 

I’m going to point out here we could have caught all the K’s we wanted out deeper. 15/22’ of water on gravel. I caught 3 keeping the boat in 20’ not throwing as much in front of Steve and throwing at the K’s on LiveScope. 

Could have wrecked them as I caught all 3 I threw at.  The Jaws were 10’ and under in the surf and they were as mean as a linebacker. 

A couple of times we both thought we had a 4 pounder and it was a 16” male. Great fun.