The Baron

It’s even worse than that - 3rd Saturday in June, so this year that’s June 21st. Lake Ontario/St. Lawrence River is even worse. After it closes May 10, largemouth opens June 21st but smallmouth not until July 5th. 🙁 That only leaves about 4 months of fishing. I’m seriously trying to figure out when and how I can get myself south for a month or two each year. I’m about done with winter.

Really nice markings on that one. 😎

Yes, when I see tournament fisherman down south pulling bass right off their beds it confuses me. We have to wait until the 3rd Saturday in June to fish bass, and it will be too cold to fish by early November which makes our season extremely short. ☹️ Here's a few of the boat. Wes and I talked many times last year about how awesome it will be when we get a 19ft. aluminum - our dream boat. It's a blessing to be able to make the dream a reality so soon. Just look at the size of that front deck.😍 This boat will open up much more opportunity to chase monster smallmouth on Lake Ontario. Only weird thing is my wife said she wanted a bigger deck this year, but now that we have it she doesn't seem happy.🤷‍♂️

We're getting a nasty freezing rain storm here. Started last night and the radar looks very bad, for the next 24 hours. The biggest fishing show in Ontario (probably in Canada) is tomorrow, I was excited to go but it's two hours away and it doesn't look like the roads will be safe at all. I'm beyond angry at the weather right now.

Nice one! I dream of a 7lb. some day. 😎 I don’t have any kayak experience, but I’ve fished out of a canoe a lot. Hooksets are definitely a challenge. As is working a frog or jerkbait.

Randy B. did a YouTube video on the Classic having very low attendance. It did, likely for several contributing reasons but of course he blamed it on claims that watching people fish with FFS is boring. Like watching other people fish was ever not boring? 🤷🏼‍♂️

No doubt that Easton Fothergill’s story is one of overcoming adversity. From emergency brain surgery to winning a Collegiate, then two open wins and to the Elites. Then show up and dominate the Classic. No one could say that young man won only because of FFS. I don’t really know what happened with the Johnston bothers last year. But sad to think they aren’t good ambassadors from Canada. I’d like to think we have a reputation to uphold, of being good folks.

Amazing to see the win go to a 22yo. and 2nd place to a 19yo. That’s the reality of FFS, but it feels somewhat wrong to me that the Super Bowl of bass fishing is won by guys with so little experience and of (until now) relatively unknown names. To ask a 19yo about how long he’s been dreaming of the BM Classic trophy seems weird when there’s guys who could say they’ve dreamt of it 20+ years. I think it might even be dangerous for Bass Masters to make it so easy for newbies to dominate, in that folks might stop caring about the Classic if it looks like a battle for rookie of the year with no “fan favorites” competing. Not taking anything away from the young guys, it’s just my personal thought on things. And completely unrelated… I noticed Cory Johnston was the only one of the super six who didn’t detour to shake Trey McKinney’s hand on his way off stage. I thought that was a disappointing lack of sportsmanship from the only Canadian we had left in the race. 👎🏻

Always good to meet another friendly fellow angler. Sounds to me like he was maybe throwing a glide bait?

Yeah @Swamp Girl we had a few BEAUTIFUL warm, sunny days last week. Now it’s back to about 20-25F overnight and struggling to get above freezing as a high. Windy yesterday, snow in the forecast for Tuesday. It’s a been a grind and we’re not quite done.😕 BUT… I’m scheduled to pickup the new boat on April 1st (🫢) then straight into the shop for electronics and trolling motor install. I spent a few hours yesterday reorganizing baits, and just ordered a few more boxes and bags. Hopefully things will warm up and I’ll get after some early season Lake Ontario bass before it closes down May 10th. A short and closing window, but we should get a few tries.🤞🏻 Then it’s just pike fishing until the regular bass season opens on the back lakes June 21st.

For what the op listed… Jigs - straight braid flipping cover or in stained water. Straight fluoro in clear water, especially for dragging finesse jigs for smallmouth on Lake Ontario. Chatterbaits - 12-14# copoly Cranks - 10-12# copoly for square bills and medium cranks, 14# fluoro for deep crankin’ Topwater - 12# Big Game mono on a dedicated popper, whopper plopper, spook rod. But will throw the same on my medium crankbait setup with 12# copoly. All my spinning gear is braid to 8-10# fluoro leader for everything. Dropshot, ned, tubes, shaky head, and small keitechs on a ball head or underspin. The oddballs are when I’m throwing a bubba shot setup on a baitcaster with braid to a 12# fluoro leader, or for Carolina Rig which is braid to 12# Big Game mono.

I’ve never used a Bantam. But I have two Curado DC 150 size. They’re fine, but I don’t know if I’d buy another. I’m more impressed by the SLX DC, which feels better to me and is less money. As for the DC feature, I don’t know if it’s necessary at all. And the 4 settings seem more restrictive than adjusting a non DC reel properly. I think the root problem might be I’ve just really come to prefer Diawa reels.

Nice. You’re gonna love it. 👍🏻

I bought a 600yd spool of FC Sniper 14# and it's been good for me so far.

I can't speak for heavier crankbaits on a fast action rod, but I fish square bills on a Fenwick Elite Tech 7' medium/fast. With 10# co-poly on a Diawa cc80, it works very well for me and is a pleasure to fish. I fish medium crank baits (up to about 12ft.) on a Dobyn's Fury FR705CB crank bait rod with 12# co-poly. For heavier crank baits (16ft.+) I've gone to a 7'6" H/moderate glass cranking rod with 14# fluoro. I like the glass rod a lot, and would say the specialized cranking rod is definitely worth it for several reasons.

I like the VMC twist lock hooks, usually unweighted but sometimes with the 1/8oz. belly weight. VMC stuff is readily available around here, so it’s a brand I use often.

Absorootry. 👍🏻

Just re: the rust… I don’t put wet baits away. But the lockers on my little Bass Tracker are extremely humid and will leak so I’ve had tackle boxes get totally fogged inside. Once was after a few days of rain that even with the boat covered some boxes were wet inside and I lost several packs of hooks, a few jig heads, some spinnerbaits and chatterbaits. Not a big loss, but want to avoid that ever happening again. Perhaps the new boat (a Lowe Stinger 195) will be dryer and I can get by with many of the boxes I have, and silica packs. 🤞🏻 I do still plan to try the Plano Edge jig and bladed jig boxes, maybe some of the 3700 flex for my expanding crankbait collection.

We’ve got a brand new boat for this year, with a ton of storage so now’s a good time to start upgrading my tackle storage system. I’ve been using cheap Plano and even dollar store boxes, but they aren’t waterproof and I’ve had some rust losses. Buzbe stuff is crazy expensive, so I’m thinking the Plano Edge boxes are the way to go. For those using the Edge stuff, are they proving to be waterproof and durable? Do you have any favourite or hated boxes in the lineup? I’m also looking at the BKK terminal tackle box, for hooks, weights etc. Soft baits likely in bags, sorted by type. Any other ideas are welcome. 🙂

We fished smallmouth often with a Rapala F13 or J11 when I was a kid. Almost always in gold, or silver but sometime orange or chartreuse. This was in the 70’s-80’s. I guess I never paid enough attention to articles in the In Fisherman though, because we didn’t know the F13 was a jerkbait. We’d either troll or cast/steady retrieve and give a flick or speed up/slow down occasionally. We caught fish, but I wonder how much better we might have done if we fished it properly. Mister Twister was the other big deal when I was a kid. Beetle Spin with a 3” grub was one of my favourites. Of course a hula popper, jitterbug or a Heddon Dying Flutter spook for topwater. Come to think of it, I’ll bet the fish haven’t seen those last three in a while - might be worth a nostalgic topwater outing this year. 🤔

I do have a couple lakes now I’d call home lakes, but I still use my electronics to find deep weed edges and a couple humps/ledges that usually produce most of my fish. I’ll also sidescan and watch for interesting things when I’m just working along the shore. Not really looking at it, but it’s on. On less familiar lakes, I will idle around and look/do some QuickDraw contour mapping either to find a starting spot or whenever I want a break. But usually as soon as I see something interesting, I’m fishing it. I know I could speed up the lake learning process if I spent more time idling, but I like fishing too much. 🙂

I’m looking at a few lakes north/east of Charlotte, probably try High Rock, Baden, Lake Norman… maybe explore some smaller lakes. Most likely catch and release, but good to know spots are considered invasive. For sure we’ll be carefully reading all the regulations.

It’ll probably be mid-late April before we can get on Lake Ontario for the early bass season (open now, closes May 10). We’ll try for smallies with finesse football jigs, dropshot, jerkbaits and underspins. But I’m more looking forward to some fat prespawn largemouth with squarebills, bladed jigs, spinnerbaits, a compact jig and likely a wacky rig. But first we need to pickup the new boat and figure out a whole new tackle organization plan now that we’ll have about 3x the storage space. 🙂

That’s an epic trip! 🤯😎 When our season opens, I’ll be hunting for a Canadian DD (that’s 5 pounds on the metric system 😝)

I'm panning a trip to NC for March break next year, with my son and a couple buddies. We'll be after "bigger than here" LMB primarily, but might take a moment to try and catch our first ever spotted bass. Are spotted bass likely to be caught while we're after largemouth, probably fishing shallow or cranking points? Or are they more of a deeper water fish? I don't feel a need to go after them specifically, but would be fun to say we caught some. Or are spots special for some reason and maybe someone out there will say spots are their favourite to catch?