Saturday I fished the Ottawa Valley South Bassmasters Upper Rideau Lake club tournament. We decided to target smallmouth bass and shortly after arriving at my favourite spot on the lake we had our fish smallie in the boat!!! We continued working the area with topwater baits and drop shotting soft plastics and in short order we had a 5 fish tournament limit in the livewell.
In the bright sunny conditions the fish were quite active, almost every fish we reeled in had another fish or two following it up to the surface, but no matter what bait we dropped down to the followers they were not interested.
We continued fishing until the end of the day catching a few more fish to upgrade a few in our livewell, but we needed to cull a couple 2 pounders we had, which we could not and ended the day with a decent bag of smallmouth but not enough to get a pay check.
My most successful set up for the day was drop shotting a Great Lakes Finesse 4" drop worm using an Eco Pro Tungsten Full Contact Drop Shot Weight on my Okuma Inspira spinning reel pairing with a medium action Okuma Serrano spinning rod.
Sunday was my 50th birthday and we were looking for silver!!! I joined my friend Kyler and his buddy on his new RH Aluminum Boats SH180 boat as we heading to Lake Ontario in search of salmon. After launching around daybreak we head out and set up our 6 rod spread, 2 downrigger rods, 2 dipsey rods and 2 leadcore rods running a mix of spoons and flashers with twinkie rigs with MC Rockets or herring strips.
It did not take to long and we had our first fish in the boat a decent chinook salmon that feel for my Hotfish lures flasher and twinkie rig combo.
The action was not super fast and furious, but we worked the morning switching up depths and baits and in the end put some decent chinook salmon in the boat along with a couple nice brown trout destined for the BBQ.
Overall a great day on the water Kyler's new RH Aluminum boat ran great and had lots of room for an 18.5 foot boat, you could fit 4 people easily for fishing.
No big salmon to weigh in for the Silver Salmon Challenge, but a great weekend on the water.
