Three and a half days in smallmouth paradise

August 28, 20196 yr

I just got home from spending time at my parents place in Elliot Lake, Ontario.

My son and I go up every year for a few days before he starts school, we have a good visit with my folks and take advantage of the tremendous smallmouth fishery they have.

This was the fifth year we’ve been up since my folks moved up there, I live in Parry Sound, about 3-1/2 hours south on Georgian Bay. We have our own special bass paradise around my house, but that small drive up the highway is like going back in time about 200 years or so. The city of Elliot Lake’s population is about 10000 or so, but as soon as you leave the town limits, there is virtually nobody around. In three and a half days, we fished on four different lakes and only saw one other boat anywhere, and that was a guy downrigging for lake trout.

It’s pretty nice to launch the boat and know that you’re about to have a 10-15 mile long lake all to yourself, with only some eagles, a bunch of beavers and monster smallmouth.

This year was a bit “off”, for the fishing though. Much like @A-Jay has been dealing with just across the pond from us, there has been an unruly bit of wind for the last couple weeks. From Sunday afternoon when we first showed up until this evening as I type this, it’s been a steady, nasty blow that’s been coming from several different directions at different times, almost like there’s a giant game of hot potato going on with the pressure systems, and it’s seemed to put the bass in a bit of a funk.

Day one started out with only about 25 bass caught in 3 hours, and nothing over 3-1/2 lbs. Still a decent afternoon, but usually on this particular lake in the same time we can get up to 60-80 bass and many up to 5 lbs.

Day two was a morning of downrigging for lakers on a beautiful, deep, gin clear lake ( I put a few pics of the area on the post a photo thread a couple days ago). Same thing with the lakers, only managed a couple small guys, usually we hammer on them pretty well too. In the afternoon we switched gears and started hunting the massive bass here, I’ve broke off a couple fish in years past here that were every bit of 7+ lbs. This time it was a literal roller coaster ride, as we drifted shoals and flats off islands in 3’ rollers, trying our best to keep a drop shot near bottom, as well as covering water with big spinnerbaits and jerkbaits ( their usual delicacy here). We did get a bunch of fish up to about 3lbs but no big ones.

Day three was the best, on another lake that’s more shallow and predominantly a perch forage based lake. Even though the wind was still howling, this lake is fairly narrow and has lots of connected bays, so we found some calm areas in the morning that we absolutely hammered them on a Rapala Skitter-V and a Berkley Chopo, easily catching 30 bass up to 4lbs in an area the size of a house. In the afternoon, the wind kicked up a notch again, but we found them on several big 10-12’ deep flats that had massive cabbage beds spread across them. My old man doesn’t fish that often, so he’s always a good candidate for a 1/2oz Strike King burner spinnerbait, it casts a mile and he can burn it over the weeds to call up the big ones. I was mainly throwing a Strike King Rage Swimmer on a 1/2oz football head, I can swim it fast across the top of the cabbage or slow it down in the openings and across the rocks, and together we hammered another 40 or so bass up to about 4-1/2 lbs and I lost 2 that were easily in the 5 lb range that jumped like a rocket ship and threw the bait right back at me. These fish have almost zero pressure, and when they hit a fast moving bait, you have to be holding that rod tight or it’ll be tore out of you hands. I’ve caught a lot of big smallmouth in my life, but these guys seem to have about five more gears in them, and go like mad and just don’t stop fighting, even the little guys that barely weigh a pound.

Day four was a quick trip to a lake close to town for a couple hours before the rain started and we had to leave. Usually we get a bunch of nice ones here too but today it was about 30 bass and not one was over a pound.

All in all it was a good trip, the fish still cooperated a bit for us, was nice to visit the family and the scenery was outstanding as always.

Maybe I’ll sneak up there again this fall when they start to school up more and hopefully the weather is more settled in. If not, there’s always next year though.