Swamp Girl

I bought a half-finished house in Maine that took my time and money to finish. Then my old SUV quit on me and you need an SUV or truck to go where I'm going. Sure, there are many smallmouth in Maine and some right down the road, but I'm so spoiled by fishing wild lakes that teem with fish.

I haven't caught a smallmouth for four years. Come next June, it will be five. However, that will change in a big way as I'll be in Canada for 23 days. I'll be fishing solo from a Kevlar canoe and I just bought a Nissan Xterra Pro4X, which has skid plates, off-road shocks, a locking rear differential, hill assist, and off-road tires. I'll be going down forest service/logging roads and will be fishing lakes where it's unlikely I'll ever see anyone. In my excitement, I keep opening Google Earth to imagine myself casting here and there. I'm going to try to reach one lake that perhaps no one has ever fished. It's too small for a float plane and I'll have to cross swamps and portages that don't even exist to reach it. I doubt it will have smallmouth, but it's likely to have pike and they're fun too. I'll be fishing 12 lakes in total and one river. On the way home, I'm going to try and catch an aurora trout too.

Rapala F13, Rapala Skitterpop, undressed brass Mepps, Senko, and pearl fluke.

I've caught thousands on a Rapala F13 in orange. I know that might seem too big a bait for smallmouth, but I like the casting distance. However, I've also lost scores of the F13s to pike.

F13 Rapala.

I have caught thousands on F13 Rapalas. The F13s allow for long casts, which keep the fish from seeing you. I use barbless trebles for quick releases and the fish's safety and my safety. I also remove the middle treble. However, you will lose these lures to pike and especially smaller pike. For whatever reason, the pike above 35" are less likely to cut mono.

I once saw a crawdad with one huge claw and one small claw. The big claw was nearly as big as the crawdad's body.

Whadda fish! Well done, young man.

F13 Rapala. Twitch three or four times and then fast retrieve to cast again. I like orange because I see it in a chop.

Those look huge to me! Great pics too.

Now that's just what I want to hear!

Thanks for the input, Mark. When I study a lake on Google Earth, I mark all the inflow areas and have the best luck there.

Will smallmouth congregate where current flows out of a Canadian Shield lake, like shortly before a waterfall?

F13 orange Rapala.

I write a column for the leading paddling magazine and would like to profile a kayak fisher who meets these criteria: 1. Has paddled and fished from more than one kayak. 2. Has a favorite boat. 3. Is able to talk about why they love that boat best. 4. Can provide high res, fine photos of their person in the boat. If you want to do this, provide a way for me to contact you and I will. I can only profile one kayak fisher.

thedarkarcher, I write for a couple kayak/kayak fishing mags and I'm wondering if you're open to a profile. If so, provide your email and I'll contact you.

Hooray!

River fish rock!

Thanks for answering! I catch a lot of doubles in my canoe in Canada where my partner has one in the bow and I have one in the stern, but getting a pic of both bass isn't easy, since you can't stand and the canoe is pretty long. Say, Roadwarrior, this is a heckuva nice website. Whoever built it deserves an 11-pound smallmouth.

How do you manage to get a pic of two fish? Are you keeping both those fish? Do you catch one and put in a live well, hoping you'll catch another so that you'll have a pic of two fish?

So many of you suggest 4" Senkos that I'm sorry I own hundreds of 5" and 6" Senkos, but the bass I catch sure like those bigger ones.

For sheer numbers of smallmouth, it would be an orange F13 Rapala, which casts far, can be seen in the chop, and is most likely to trigger a strike in the first three twitches, although I have seen them hit the water and go straight down. Other than Senkos fished wacky style, which I use to follow-up a missed surface strike, I don't fish soft plastics much. On certain days, plain Mepps number 3 spinners in brass will catch fish after fish after fish.

It's not a certainty because I think I'll need a spring to keep it full, but the land I bought does include wetland, so I'm hopeful. If I'm able to walk over to the pond and dunk a worm in a few years, a dream will have come true.

As I've shared in other threads, 95% of my fishing is in wilderness areas where I've got the lake to myself and the bass are dumb and dumber. There are eagles and bears and ospreys, waterfalls and 90-foot cliffs. 100-bass days per person are typical. In short, it's Heaven. However, another sort of Heaven is coming as I bought a house in Maine and I'm going to have a fishing pond dug. It's expensive, so it won't be big, but I'm hoping for an acre. I'm thinking of bluegills or trout because they're tasty. When I was a kid, my brothers and I would pedal to ponds, where we'd bobber fish for bluegills by day and wade for bass at night. I loved those wee lakes and I'll love one again.

My smarts are my problem. Because I'm smart, I remember everywhere I've caught fish and I go try those places for several days, catching little, until I adapt. In short, I'm the stupidest smart animal you'll ever meet.