Bluebasser86

There will be plenty of people who recognize the lake and even the spot from the video I'm sure. It's a long ways from a secret lake, but that made the decision to share it a lot easier.

There's more pictures in my post in the Fishing Reports forum, but here she is.

What seems like forever ago, I caught a 5lb smallmouth on a jerkbait fishing with my buddy on a super windy and cold day in April that we shouldn't have even been on the water in my little boat. I was 17 or 18 at the time, in the next decade and a half, I'd tie that fish 2 more times with smallmouth that registered 5 pounds even. Fast-forward to the present, I recently turned 33 and haven't seen a smallmouth over 4 pounds in the last few years due to continued high, dirty water conditions at our limited smallmouth lakes and this year looks to be more of the same. Up until Friday I had caught a grand total of 2 smallmouth for the year, and one of those was from a lake I hadn't caught or ever seen a smallmouth from in 20 years of fishing it. I'd actually planned to head south and fish a different lake. I was afraid the water would be high and muddy at the little smallmouth lake, combined with the fact it was going to be a post cold front day, but something in my stomach kept telling me to head west in the morning. There's a couple other lakes close by, so I told myself if the water was muddy when I got there I wouldn't even put my boat on the water, I'd just go to one of the other lakes and chase largemouth like I was going to originally. When I pulled up to the ramp, I could see a greenish-blue tint to the water. I walked down the ramp and could easily see 2' down. Something just felt right at that moment like I'd really made the right decision. The fish helped me feel like I had done right too, catching several right off the bat on topwater and a homemade micro finesse jig. Less than 30 minutes after I got there, a boat showed up that made my stomach churn, the state shock boat. I'd seen lots of bass and crappie on beds, and I watched them all day go down the banks shocking fish off their beds to take measurements. I nearly left right when they showed up, I've been unfortunate enough to be on the water when they were sampling before and it almost always shuts the fish down completely, but this lake is a little bigger than the others it's happened on, so I tried to stay positive and stick with it. As the day went on, I caught gobs of largemouth, smallmouth, white bass, wipers, green sunfish, bluegill, drum (and later caught a few walleye and even a trout). I hadn't fished one of my favorite spots for smallmouth because it was one of the first places the shock boat went. I'd pretty much written it off for that trip, but I decided I'd try it for a minute. I was fishing a small Duo Realis Rozante 77SP jerkbait on a 6' 8" Ethos spinning rod, 30 size President, and 8lb AbrasX, fishing the bait pretty quickly when I snapped it into a really heavy fish, I thought I'd buried it into a big clump of weeds until I felt the first headshakes. I saw a big head really quickly and thought I'd seen brown, then she came up again and my heart stopped when I was sure it was a smallmouth. I hadn't caught a fish much over 2 pounds all day, didn't have my net out, and hadn't retied once after catching very conservatively 3 dozen fish on this bait. Trying to stay calm, I grabbed my net and started to get it ready when she started coming at the boat. There's not much in the way of solid cover, but there's lots of weeds she could bury in, so I had to keep her up out of those if possible. I caught up to her, tried to extend my net when disaster struck, I pulled the handle out of the hoop of my net. I almost just tried to net her with the hoop but I knew I needed the handle to have a chance, so I fought the fish (which had another giant following it, wish I'd had someone fishing with me to try to double up on it), wish one hand while trying to put my net back together with the other. I finally got the handle back in place and started working her towards it. She jumped once towards the boat and I awkwardly stabbed at her and thought I'd caught the hooks of my jerkbait for a minute. One more pass and finally, FINALLY, she slid into the net. I was just in shock for a minute at how huge she looked, a truly massive smallmouth for our area. My scale settled on 5.83 pounds, just 1.05 pounds off the state record. I was in the clouds the rest of the day, almost lipped a walleye with a face full of jerkbait hooks because I was in such a fog. I spent about 30 minutes trying to get her buddy to bite before finding someone to take a couple pictures for me and watching her swim away. Don't know if I'll ever top that in Kansas, but I know I'll have fun trying Of course I got it on video too so you can see how lucky I really was to get her in the boat.

A little over 20" and fat will put her in the 5-5.5 pound range. Now go to Ebay and buy a luggage scale for $5 so you don't have to wonder next time.

I use those almost exclusively for worm fishing and haven't had the same problem. The close up picture looks fine, it's not going to be completely closed.

I wish Kansas was fluid and proactive about fish management like that, but after watching them shocking crappie and bass of spawning beds yesterday I've pretty much lost all hope in them doing much good for our lakes.

Shawnee on a jerkbait

All these years of trying, finally broke my 5lb PB for smallmouth today and I smashed it with a 5.83. Pics will have to wait until I go back to work, I can't post them from my phone.

All ramps are closed at Clinton as of today.

No snakeheads here but the smallmouth have really benefited from the zebra mussels in our lakes where they now co-exist. The numbers and size of fish have exploded. By all accounts, snakeheads are aggressive, hard fighters, and take up a niche that was currently mostly unfilled. I don't want to see them spread, but they sound like a fun problem to have.

If you haven't already, this is probably worth reading through. Got out for a couple hours this morning and did pretty decent doing something I very rarely do, fishing a swim jig. Finally got the video together from my dad and I just laying it on some walleye a couple weeks ago too.

When the water is very cold, short "pulls" with no jerk at all is often my best retrieve. Jerkbaiting effectively takes a lot of trial and error.

I don't know if I'd read much into Roland swearing by anything, he put his face on the Helicopter Lure afterall. A Senko looks alive and easy to catch, I think that's the simplest reason why fish eat them again and again. They're also easy to fish so a lot of people fish them successfully.

Got out and did some bassin after work this morning in the little boat. Water was high and muddy like everywhere else. Not sure why I tied on a swim jig since I never fish them, but it turned out to be the only thing I could get them to eat minus the first one I caught on a Toadrunner Jr. Thanks to @Munkin for the jig. It was fun for the whole hour I got to fish it until a fish stole it.

Grass is the only place I fish a swim jig really. If it's too thick to fish a bladed jig or spinnerbait, I'll fish swim jig, which is very rare. Oddly enough, I today was one of those days. I fished one of @Munkin's swim jigs in a firetiger/perch color in some dirty water with lots of stringy grass mixed with flooded shoreline grass and snot moss. Minus a Toadrunner fish that started the day, all of my fish slammed the swim jig. Unfortunately I was ill equipped to fish it and broke it off setting the hook on what looked to be my biggest fish of the day.

I can't catch any big fish. Lots of them, but the fish over 5 just aren't happening for me this year like the last few. I think I've caught 2 or 3 over 5 and 1 over 6 so far.

Welcome!

There's quite a few big boulders and a few scattered trees down there along with the fact that there's a small shelf that drops really quickly into deep water. Lots of attractive things to hold fish.

My noisy little bug eating buddies are back.

Up the river is probably your best option to avoid the boat traffic. Way up the Osage and launch in Drake Harbor. There's some pretty good fishing up there at times too.

Wilson is the cove almost directly across from the marina cove, and Boyscout is the next cove towards the dam from that, it has the rowing docks in it.

Zoom trick worms and magnum finesse worms YUM Mightee worm Netbait T-mac and C-Mac Zoom Ol' Monster and Mag II Mann's Jelly Worm

Nice! I miss fishing Wyco. Never really had to look for the smallmouth when I use to fish it all the time, they just happened. If you threw topwater all day and caught that many fish, you should have ran into one though. Use to catch a bunch of them on the bank across the lake from the beach, the points of Wilson and Boyscout cove, and right off the boat ramp.

I'd assume they spawn at a similar time there as they do at the power plant lakes here in KS, which is typically late April through early June. The spawn is a much more drawn out process on the power plant lakes here.

Welcome!