The Spoonpluggers Forum

Now we all know that our study fish is the largemouth bass.
Buck teaches us that if he has deep water in the lake, he will always choose deep water over grass and wood or docks that type of stuff COVER.
But it looks as if he should have said if the water vis. is such
Watching the boys on Mille Lacs and I have seen this on many northern places they fish.
On Mille Lacs no one has caught a largemouth out away from the shore cover, grass and marinas.
The lake has 42' of water, so what gives.
Kinda makes me rethink some of my fishing holes as to how I need to fish them.
I once heard Keith Combs of the bassmaster elite guys say this.
He was taught that a bass is a bass no matter where it is, north, south, east, west doesn't matter.
He stated believing that, almost cost him his career.
Said, he thought he could catch them up north same as he does on offshore structure down in Texas.
WRONG.

You are correct in your thinking. In every one of the Great Lakes, the largemouth are somewhere shallow. Lake St. Clair, all shallow. You never catch a largemouth out away from the bank. Canals, back water areas away from current. weedlines and always shallow. Mille Lacs is the same thing. I have fished several inland lakes near Mille Lacs which are all natural and those are different unless they have lots of northern pike. The bass will move deeper in the late fall as they do in the lakes near me but are near the outside weedline all summer long. Now and then a bigger bass will be caught out with the northerns but it will have to be an adult to survive. It could be the competition of all the different species causing the bass to have to be shallow. Not positive but I would say that's a good guess. We all live in a small fishing world and outside that zone can be all new. Buck never spoke of any specific situation but gave us what works pretty good everywhere. A good spoonplugger will figure it all out if he gets a chance to fish a new body of water long enough. You will get all the answers in time. We have the advantage over the bulk of fishermen who have no guidelines. I never expected those guys would be catching so many good sized smallmouth so shallow. I hope they stay there for three more weeks. With my luck, it will go sour just as I get there. Been there twice and had my butt handed to me both times. Last year, I fished it for one day and after that we went to the surrounding lakes and wacked them. It was easy. Take Care. John

There are a lot of factors that affect this stuff. It would be lying that I am not having a bit of a struggle fitting what I am seeing into our basic guideline. A lot of what I am seeing is what I am experiencing on Mille Lacs this summer. Scattered bites, bigger fish shallower than expected despite clearish water and weather. Other clues I had were my going weeks not catching anything bigger than 6-8” fish even down in the 30’ depths.

I think there are a number of different things going on. First, even big Largemouth are in danger of getting eaten. We have world record Musky close to 70” long and Pike in high 40” range. I sincerely think that Largemouth get eaten like popcorn. Why? I don’t know. Largemouth May move quite a bit slower than Smallmouth so the Largemouth survivors may tend to be around docks, weeds, etc. There are some big ones but not in the numbers of the Smallmouth. Just ask some Bass guys what happens to the bass populations after Musky or Pike are introduced. Generally the Bass start showing up damaged and the numbers decline pretty fast.

We really have to look at big bodies of water differently. Somewhere in the Green Book, Mr Perry said that big waters have to be considered closer to an ocean situation than a natural lake situation. While I understand the words I don’t understand the meaning hence my challenges on fishing this lake.

I completely disagree with the talking heads on MLF. Maybe the back bays got temps in the 80’s but in the main lake I saw 1 day of temps at 74. Otherwise it was 72 degs. Also this water is not tanic. It’s clearish yellow-green with 3-5’ of clarity. I don’t know where they get that bs.

The Smallmouth are eating very well. Their belly’s are stretched out like they get during pre-spawn from eating little orange crayfish. There are so many of them that you hook them trolling. Zebras are certainly a problem but no different than Erie or StClair.

Anyway I have a lot of things bumping around my head but I have no answers yet. That’s why I do the hard work. I want the answers.

Morning

I wish I could get there and fish it but just to damn far