BlueRanger
05-30-2011, 10:48 PM
Just back from 6 days of Smalliepalooza 2011 part 2. Fishing was hit and miss - a great half-day here and there, mixed in with some very slow, difficult fishing. This makes two weeks in a row that I didn't get the several consecutive days of constant sunshine I was expecting from the weather forecast, and as a result the water temps were still in the 58-60 range most of the time. Fish are still prespawn and there were only a few occasions when the bigger fish were in the shallows in any numbers. I only saw a few beds scattered here and there, and I didn't catch any females on the shorelines. That's likely to change with the warm weather now moving in, and anybody looking for the best smallmouth fishing of the season will want to be there this weekend. As late as it is, they'll be done in a hurry. By next weekend, you're likely to be dealing with finicky nest-guarding males and females recovering from spawning.
The highlight of the trip was a Thursday afternoon outing with Jeff Roth. We didn't get many fish - half a dozen bass, including a 15" largemouth, and several northerns in about 3 hours. As usual, he picked the windiest day to come over. But we watched several minutes of the craziest, most entertaining goose preening behavior either of us had ever seen. I posted several pictures of it - they were beating their wings on the water, paddling like mad, rolling on their sides like loons, and even flipping completely upside-down in the water.
40 new photos uploaded to the link below.
The highlight of the trip was a Thursday afternoon outing with Jeff Roth. We didn't get many fish - half a dozen bass, including a 15" largemouth, and several northerns in about 3 hours. As usual, he picked the windiest day to come over. But we watched several minutes of the craziest, most entertaining goose preening behavior either of us had ever seen. I posted several pictures of it - they were beating their wings on the water, paddling like mad, rolling on their sides like loons, and even flipping completely upside-down in the water.
40 new photos uploaded to the link below.