Got out early on Tuesday, the day after Labor day.   The morning started warm, calm and very foggy.   Conditions looked good and expectations were high.  But is often the case, the first two and a half hours produced only a few dink lmb.  Most of the shallow weeds have started dying off already here.  Although most of them are still standing, they are brown & dead; both the bait and the bass seem to have abandon them.

 

 Took me a while to first find a few bass and then to get them to bite.  Early fall can be like that.  One minute I might be getting bites with a deep drop shot and the next, the fish are chewing up a shallow crank bait. 

 

   By 10 o’clock, and struggling to put anything together, the wind picked up.  I needed to do something different so I went to an old trick.  Since my Hummingbird unit doesn’t differentiate which weeds have dies off yet, I threw a deep crank.  Not so much to get fish but looking for the greenest weed I could find.   It’s a bit of a pain staking process but it’s accurate.  As fall progresses and the weeds die off continues, they will fall and lay flatter on the bottom but until then, this works.

 

   The better spots were the green weed patches at the top & bottom of breaks.  Additionally, I found a longer drop with a slower/ more gradual slope that had two or three patches of green weed half way between the top & bottom of the drop.  All my better fish came from these spots and you can bet there were way points dropped.

 

   Looking for a few of the bigger smb in this lake, I worked a Berkley Powerbait Flat Back Shad swimbait  around, over and sometimes into the green weeds.   Combining the swim baits with one of the new Freedom Tackle Hydra Hybrid & Stealth Hybrid heads worked well.  Depending on the cover, an Owner Wide Gap Plus EWG Hook or an Eagle Claw Lazor Trokar Flipping  hook worked very well.  I’m liking that head more and more each time I use it.  btw ~ Pike like them quite a bit too so after getting bit off twice, I had to go to wire.

 

Pics & Videos . . .

 

A-Jay

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qizGVl2GyKo&list=UUVOdp3U9QaJpxiXbHgNu0vw

Nice Smallies. Cant wait to get back to michigan on leave and slam some smallies. Love michigan you got lakes with 4-6lb largemouth and then go to a lake next door with giant smallies. Or lakes with both. We got a couple down by Gladwin that have giant smallies and largies. Love it.