Remember these fish?
The first week of July I took my boss and his son out on Mississippi Lake for the day. Before they arrived at the launch I tossed a jig and craw for a couple of hours and caught 8 or 9 bass - here are my two best for the early morning - each was roughly 4 lbs and came out of 8 feet of water in the middle of no-where. Gotta love the jig and craw in the cabbage.
A little while later I picked up my boss and his son and the good fishing continued. We went to one of my favourite spots on Mississippi Lake for largemouth and while there I noticed a rocky channel that I had never noticed before. I switched from the jig and craw and tossed a 6 inch senko into the channel and voila... a beautiful smallie...
The topper on the day was this fish that my Boss's son Olivier caught. I had taught him how to rig senkos and he was getting pretty bold with the location of his casts - getting real close to brushy cover that I wouldn't go near with a medium action spinning rod and 8 lb test mono. But this fish charged out of the brush and came straight for the boat which was in a comfortable two feet of water with sparse veggies around it. It was quite a battle and a relief to net that sucker. Well done Olivier!
I'm still waiting for word on that pay raise I requested.
At this point I was obsessed with the jig and craw and getting real confident. I went with Mick to Clayton Lake and while I only caught three bass that afternoon, all were good ones - the best one being this beauty that came out of grassy stumpy water about four feet deep - right beside the boat he was.
Then I hit a real slump. Not only did I struggle to catch big bass, I struggled to catch any. It was a reality check for me - I was beginning to think that I was an unstoppable force with the jig and craw. I don't believe I caught a bass bigger than three pounds over the the next two weeks. That's what happens when ya begin to thing you are becoming a good angler - the fish gods crush your spirit like a bug.
In the last week of July it was relief to go on vacation to a cottage in Quebec for a week. Lac Sinclair is a very small and deep lake in the La Peche region... and full of great smallmouth. Last year at this cottage I caught a ton of two pounders with the occasional three pounder tossed in to make me say "Ohhhhhh Boy" when the drag began to peel off the spinning reel. This year I practiced finding and fishing deeper structure and while the total numbers went down, the number of smallies in the three to four lb range went up. I worked a lot of tubes rigged on jigs in the deeper water from 15 to 30 feet and looked for a lot of points that were not visible from above. This requires a lot of patience and an eagle-eye on the Lowrance - constantly monitoring depth and fish signals. When I would find a spot (usually a fish would let me know I am on a spot) I would throw out a buoy and work the tube jig all around it - often picking up three or four more fish in the next couple of minutes - then nothing. Time to find the next spot. This is one of the better smallies I caught doing this...
I was pretty proud of myself for working as hard as I did to find these areas of structure that I am certain not another soul had ever fished before. See that smallie in the pic above? He spat out someone else's tube onto the floor of my boat. To make matters even worse - it wasn't even pumpkinseed colour - it was some kind of white colour. I like pumpkinseed colour. I like it in all my plastic tubes, senkos and craws.
Upon returning from Lac Sinclair I went back to Clayton Lake and got thrashed on that Saturday afternoon by a pile of thunderstorms that rolled through. I had to hide under the same clump of cedars on numerous occasions. When I was able to get on the water, the jig and craw produced a couple of fish in the two pound range.
Another storm rolling onto Clayton Lake
And another storm coming on quickly
And my shelter from the boomers
When it starts to rain, that is when I like to toss a topwater and I tried this weed demon for about 25 casts or so in the area where I took shelter - I was too afraid to get back into the thick grass thinking that another deluge was going to come at any second. The Weed Demon produced a couple of splashes to get the adrenaline going but nothing inhaled it.
When I thought it was safe to head out more than 50 feet from my shelter I switched to a 1/2 oz Title Shot jig with a pumkinseed tube on it and found a channel that was about four feet across and a foot deeper than the surrounding water. I caught numerous largemouth in the 2 lb range but no whoppers. Here's a self-portrait of one of these bass...
Last week I had a treat. I was still on vacation from work and I took my annual overnight solo trip and chose Bob's Lake to spend two days on. Remember the hottest and most humid day of the summer last week? I was psyched up huge to hit Bob's Lake and while I caught probably 20 bass in two days, to say it was a struggle would be to understate the situation. None of the bass were bigger than two pounds and most of them were around a pound. I found the most beautiful water to fish and could not find the mother load. I fished from 6 inches of water to 30 feet. I fished beds of cabbage, fields of lilies a half mile across, trees, stumps, points, rocks, shallow flats, deep flats. I threw jigs and craws, Title Shot jigs with tubes, drop-shotted tubes, threw frogs, 10 inch worms, lizards, grubs and spinnerbaits. There was not a spot that produced more than one fish except one point that held two small bass that liked the drop-shotted tube. That night I camped at Sunset Country Resort which is about 20 kms south of Sharbot Lake. It was the hottest night I ever tried to sleep in a tent.
One word of advice if you intend to fish and explore Bob's Lake for the first time. Get yourself a good topo map and learn how to use a compass. If you don't and you stray more than a couple of miles you may never get back. I had the map but no compass and at one point thought I knew where I was but I wasn't really there... if you know what I mean. The next day I figured out where I had been and was astonished to learn just how far off the mark I really was. And if that doesn't make much sense to you, you can imagine how lost I was!
I got back to Stittsville on Wednesday evening just ahead of the tornado warnings. It was a good thing I had not done Wednesday night in the tent. The Sharbot Lake area really got pounded by the storms that blew through after the incredible heat and humidity.
Last Friday - the start of the August long week-end, my family joined a couple of other families at their cottages on the Gatineau River just past Low. On this stretch you can boat into Lac Ste. Marie which I believe is Frank Papineau's (The Week-end Fisherman) favourite body of water in the world. I didn't manage to get into the Lac because all the fishing outings were restricted to two hours and that meant hanging around the local area. Not a problem though.
On the first evening, Friday, my friend Lyndsay and I managed to score a couple of good largemouth before the sun went down.
On this stretch of the Gatineau, the bass love a 6 inch senko (pumpkinseed) dropped into fallen trees. Patience was required though - they were not exactly pounding it on the drop - and often times it took 20 seconds or so for the fish to finally decide to eat the bait. When it gets like that it makes you wonder whether you just pulled your bait away from the hawg of a lifetime because you lost patience after 20 seconds and retrieved. Who knows if another 5 seconds would have done it?
On Saturday I took a bunch of the kids to the spot on the Gatineau that I like for smallmouth. And sure enough, there were a few there that liked the pumkinseed senko - or rather, Marshall's pumkinseed senko. Here he is one of those smallies that turns an 8 year old into a bass fanatic...
Among his cousins, Marshall was the only one to boat a bass that day... and to rub more salt into the wounds of his older cousins, he caught this largemouth the next morning...
Finally, Mac managed to put his bait in the right spot and this largemouth came out of the wood to grab his senko...
And to wrap it up, I bagged this one a few minutes later...
I love the Gatineau River between the Paugan Dam and Lac Ste Marie. Look out for dead heads and floating debris - just to warn you. Next time I am gonna do my best to get into Lac Ste Marie so I will know what Frank Papineau was talking about.
So that is how my bass fishing has gone so far this year. I think my leg has seized up so I have better call it quites for the evening.
And I know what you mean about Bob's Lake! It's got more islands and little bays than you can imagine! 
,there a lot off them in the far part off the lake...