Had the good fortune to go out on a work trip to work with one of my customers last weekend, left town on Friday and worked through Monday in St Catharines, Ontario. Decided to make the most of the trip while I was out there and took Tuesday through Friday off to hit the big lakes, especially Lake Erie as I've never been there. I didn't have my boat, but I was lucky on the timing that I was able to jump in with others all week.
Tuesday I fished Lake Erie out of Buffalo with one of my subscribers. Bite was tough as it was glass out there, but things turned around in the afternoon once the clouds rolled in. Got several 4+ lbers but right at the end of the day I finally got a bigger fish with a 5.76 lb smallmouth, and my new PB, beating my previous PB from this past December at 5.46 lbs in Vermont. Best 5 on the day went 26+ lbs which was the best I've ever been part of, so it was a great start to the week.
Wednesday I was supposed to go back out there again with a friend, but the wind wasn't allowing it, so I left after we tried and failed to make it work and headed up to Cape Vincent, NY to meet up with another friend and stay with him to fish Lake Ontario and the St Lawrence River for the Canadian early season opener. Got on the river at about 1:00pm, crossed the line into Canada, and on my first cast I caught a 7 lb 5 oz smallmouth. Couldn't believe it. I've been dreaming of catching a fish that big for a long time, and this is my 5th year going up there just to try and break into the 6 lb class finally. Blew right by it right off the bat. I caught two more over 5 lbs on the day too, best 5 for us went 29 lbs even. Back to back days of a new PB and a new best 5 weight for the boat.
Thursday we started on the same spot in the river and we pulled three more over 5 lbs before that school, now greatly reduced, shut off. We headed into Lake Ontario from there and I finally got the 6+ lber I was looking for. Landed a 6 lb 7 oz, a few more over 5 lbs, and my buddy did basically the same thing. Best 5 went 28.5 lbs on the dot, lost count of the number of 4 lbers we caught too. Couldn't believe how good it was.
Friday was the last day and I wanted to be on the road by 2pm for my 7 hour drive home. We went back into Lake Ontario where we were the day before, we both broke off a number of fish and saw some good ones cruising, so we had a hunch we'd be able to do better with a wind change out there which ended up being the right call. I didn't break my PB but I came down close to tying it with a 7 lb 2 oz smallie, backed up with a 6-11, two at 5-15 and a 5-06. We caught ten that were between 5-00 and 5-15. More importantly, we finally caught the "dirty 30" and collectively we had 32 lbs 3 oz on our best 5 for the day. My own best 5 went 31 lbs 1 oz too, which was just nuts.
The vast majority of our 5+ lbers, including anything we caught 6+ lbs, came on the OW Sniper jig from Beast Coast Fishing, and all of the fish were in 8-14 FOW, water temps were mostly 48-51 degrees. Didn't see a single bed anywhere but we heard guys were finding beds on the northern end of some of the islands in the river. Didn't need forward facing sonar for anything, just a good pair of sunglasses and the right cadence working around isolated boulders in clean sandy areas. Hard to put into words just how incredibly awesome those 4 days of fishing was, especially given the tough times I had the last 4 years of trying to even get a friggen 5+ lber out of that lake and river. Now I need to figure out how to get a proper replica mount made of that 7-05 if I can. First pic is the 7-05 and second pic is the 7-02.
PXL_20240508_165616813.jpgPXL_20240510_133104505.jpg
Reply With Quote
