Fish-Hawk.Net

Finally a decent enough evening to get out for a few hours with the fly rod to pick off a few Ottawa River bass. I hopped into the tinny with the 8wt around 7:00 and headed for a bay where I had not fished yet this year. It's not all that big of a bay but it's about 8 ft deep, has some really nice cabbage patches and there is lots of wood on the shoreline. In other words, this is heaven for a largemouth. At the entrance to the bay, there is a lot of current and a nice stretch of rock shoreline where a free smallie or two can be had.

I tied on my ugliest, bass-ackwards streamer and started casting right onto the shore. Three casts in a nice 14" smallie swoops up from the deeper water and we begin our tussle that involved a half dozen leaps, a run under the boat and a spit-up minnow. Spent about a 1/2 hour at this rocky shoreline but no more smallies wanted to play.

I putted towards the back of the bay to go and muck about in the trees. I placed a bunch of really nice casts around the trees from 50' away but no one was home. While I was disappointed there were no fish in the trees, I was very happy with the accuracy of my casting from such a distance.

I decided to fling the streamer around some lily patches and noticed that a few fish were chasing minnows to the surface from about 3 ft of water. Off goes the ugly bass-ackward streamer and on goes the Stealth Bomber. I plopped the first cast right beside some lilies and it was immediately slurped up by a 14" largie. It was a typical battle with a largie, some bulldogging towards the bottom and a dash into the lilies. The 8wt won out and I sent this little largie back with a request to send over his mom. A couple of casts later, I had a fiesty little 10" largie on and followed that up with another 14"er, two 12"ers, one more 10"er and a couple of misses.

The final count for the evening was 6 largies and 1 smallie, with all of the hits coming on the surface.

I'll take that any day of the week.

Thanks for the report Beachburger. Are fly rods not allowed in your bass boat? Glad to hear you're getting out with the fly rod. You'll be all practiced up for the Algonkin club bass tournament later this month.

Fly rods are more than welcome on the bass boat. I normally use the tinny when I go out by myself for a few hours in the evening.

I'm looking forward to the outing at Muskrat. I've heard the water is high and is very muddy right now. A few weeks of nice weather will go a long way into clearing that up.