Top-water fishing for smallmouth bass (continued)

On our second night of fishing, our buddy Zilla joined us on the canoe- though he didn’t put any worms in the water.  Nevertheless, his company was welcome, and we had another nice night out on the water.  Marco kept throwing a grub, which he occasionally tipped with cheese (must be an Alberta thing).  Thinking back, it was probably a good thing that the cheese was in the water and not in his mouth, as he had been unleashing poisonous clouds of methane the entire weekend.  His luck increased on this night as he finally managed to snag a few perch.  I caught a few tiny smallmouth bass that evening using crankbaits- nothing to brag about- but it’s certainly nice to know that there are plenty of little guys who will eventually grow into big...fat...bass (sung to the melody of a particular song by Zac Brown Band).

On the last night, our canoe was down to two again.  Marco and I went back to working a dock, and caught a few more perch and small bass.  We eventually saw some bigger fish swimming around an area where the bottom had mixture of weeds and rocks, and so we worked the area for a bit to no avail.  As night set in, we returned to the bay- I figured, if something has worked in the past, it may very well work again in the future.  The mosquitos were out in full force at this point, but I wanted to tie on a popper for one last try.

Black/white lures tend to work best at night

Just as I was doing this, I saw a fish jump out of the water and attack something about 30 feet from our canoe.  I threw the lure in the vicinity of the fish- but not too close- and started chugging away, pulling the lure to make a splash, and then letting it sit.  After a few pulls, WHAM!  I set the hook and the fish was on (I must be following my own advice, thankfully- I also sharpened all of my hooks a few weeks back, which is a good habit to adopt).  The fish was smaller than the one I caught on our first night, but it was a perfect size for eating.

I promised Marco a shore-lunch type meal, and I managed to deliver right at the end of our trip.

I breaded and deep-fried the fish, which is what I generally prefer doing with bass.  Nothing fancy- we just added a little lemon juice when everything was done, and had ourselves a delicious meal.  In hindsight, I’ve learned that my filleting technique needs a lot of work.  Check out these videos on youtube for some good tips:

How to Fillet a Smallmouth Bass
How to Fillet a Northern Pike

I will try these out on my next trip, which will hopefully be somewhere where I can do some bass and pike fishing.  I’m teaching myself all of these fishing and cleaning techniques, so I realize that I still have much to learn- particularly when it comes to finesse fishing with plastics (my goal is to catch a bass on a drop-shit rig by the end of the season- this will be particularly challenging without using any electronics).  But any angler who doesn’t admit that he has something to learn will never reach his potential.  I'll leave y'all with a few more pictures- no fishing this weekend, as I'm off to Kingston to visit some friends and witness the triumph of the American Gangster at UFC 148.

My meal next to my fishing hat, which was given to me by my grandfather

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