A Nice Smallmouth Bass on the River

I have caught hundreds of smallmouth bass in my day and have seen others catch nice ones but I have only caught the little ones until this weekend.

There's a section of a river that I have driven by for years but had never fished. I used to drive around there just to look at the nice houses and dream of living in one someday.

I have a friend that lives on this stretch of river and suggested we grab our fishing gear and head out for a cruise and make a few stops and do some casting.

I'm the kind of guy that will just cast a pole out to cast a pole out. There doesn't even have to be a chance that I would catch anything, I just enjoy being outside throwing a line in the water.

Now I have seen my buddy Adam catch a few nice smallies while were gill fishing. Last fall my son, who was six at the time bagged a 4.5 lb smallmouth up on Croton Pond. My buddy Curt who lives in the Upper Peninsula has a monster smally hanging on his wall as well.

I have caught plenty of smallmouth bass on several different rivers and a a few lakes but never more than two lbs. They are still fun at any size because these rascals really put on a show. Ask anyone who has ever caught a smally about the show they put on.

My friend Brian and his neighbor fish this particular river pretty often and we were actually out trying to get some northern pike or some walleye. I noticed a lot of fish surfacing and it looked like they were hitting something close to the top of the water.

The water was too ripply for it to be bugs, that is when I noticed a school of minnows about six inches under the top of the water. It was a cloud of minnows so I figured it was time for a bait change.

We started using some crank baits that had gold spinners on them but I thought, if the fish are hitting minnows, I might as well through something in that looks like one, only a little bigger.

I threw a husky jerk out and just kept casting it. My buddy's neighbor had a few hits on the crank bait but hadn't landed anything yet.

Then boom, a 20 inch smallmouth bass nails my husker jerk. I was using a light action very long rod so the looking at my pole would make you think I had a salmon on. Nonetheless, the fish put up a battle.

Unlike every smallmouth I have ever caught, this one didn't jump out of the water. It just stayed down and stayed deep as long as it could. At first I thought I had a really good pike but the fish had this double pulling action which pike usually don't do.

The fish wouldn't tire either which led me to believe it was in fact a smallmouth bass. Sure enough when he finally tired and came to the surface, we were all surprised at how beautiful this fish was.

I know there are bigger smallmouth bass out there but for me I was very satisfied to finally catch one bigger than 15 inches that weight over four pounds.

We took a few pictures and I released that fish back in the water for someone else to catch for another day. Good times.