Saturday, July 21, 2012

Frenzy on Louis!

July 21st, 2012

I was fishing with my buddy Remi today on Lake St.Louis.  Weather conditions were perfect to look for new areas so we started somewhere we had never been and spotted smallies almost instantly.  With no wind and bright sun it was easy to spot the smallies on sand flats.  We were originally heading to this area looking for a largemouth bite but Lake St.Louis is awesome for this... You will often find smallies and largies schooling together.

Our second stop was an obvious feeding spot and we were able to catch 2 decent largies in the 3lbs range.  Some good sized smallies were seen roaming around our baits but unfortunetly none of them bit.  We spent the rest of the morning working a new sand flat quickly on the trolling motor and found tons of smallies in all sizes.  At this point we had a nice mixed bag with no fish under 3lbs and plenty of time to fish!

The afternoon was spent fishing another area with rock piles and sand and the result was very similiar with plenty of fish in the 2.5 to 4lb range.  We had a beautiful day so far but we needed a kicker fish to make it even better.  About mid-afternoon I hooked into a monster smallie that bit a 3/8oz tube..... She gave me one hell of a fight and had Remi running around with the net like a madman.  One of my biggest smallmouth on Lake St.Louis in a while that's for sure!

Great fishing, great weather, great company!  I have a feeling we'll be doing more fishing together very soon!






Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Ottawa River practice time!

July 16th, 2012

Bar and I were fishing the Ottawa river today.  We have a tournament in 2 weeks and seeing as this is by far our toughest event of the season we felt that starting early was a good idea.

We were on the water early and the weather was just perfect for practice.  As usual for this river, it was hard to get a good bite going but we were able to find a somewhat reliable smallie bite.  We flipped for a while and finally hooked into a decent size largemouth.  The chance that I catch her again in 2 weeks is slim to none but at least the area seemed like it could be holding more fish.

We mainly fished for smallies for the rest of the day and caught some more in different scenarios, but nothing spectacular.  We ended the day flipping a nice weedline and missed 2 bites... Let's hope we can catch 'em in 2 weeks!! The overall weights on the Ottawa river have been low for most and we are no exception.  Perhaps we can find more stuff next weekend and have a solid plan for our event on July 28th.


Fishin-Canada.Net Ripple - Lake St.Louis

July 14th, 2012

Fishin-Canada.net along with Basscat Boats and Simmz Baits were organizing a 3 bass limit fishing tournament today on Lake St.Louis and my partner "Bar" and I just couldn't miss it!

We didn't really have a chance to practice for this event but looking at past data and fishing reports I had a good idea where the fish would be holding.  We knew the smallie bite would be on all day so we decided to look for a "kicker" largemouth right away.  To my suprise, we caught a close to 4lbs smallmouth in our largemouth spot.  Unfortunatly, the largie bite didn't work for us so we headed for smallies rather quickly.  On our second stop we found both smallies and largies schooling in a feeding spot.  We were able to get 2 more fish in the livewell quickly for a limit of about 10lbs.  Our 3rd spot was fish after fish but nothing to up our bag...

Stuck at about 10.5 lbs, we knew we were missing a big fish to have a chance at winning this event so we decided to do a run for another spot across the lake.  It proved to be the right move when Bar hooked into a well over 4lbs smallmouth on a tube that decided to give him a big fight! He fought her well but ending up losing the fight on the 3rd jump.... only a few inches from the net.  Looking at the results... this was the winning fish as we had predicted but hey, it happens and we move on!  We fished the area for a while but mostly caught clones of the fish we already had in the livewell.

We went back to our largie spot for a few cast before weigh in but it was too late.  We weighed in 10.40lbs good enough for 6th out of 27 teams.

Congrats to Jacques Chopin for his win.  A nice bag of 11.30lbs of beautiful smallies!

Pics of the event can be seen here :
http://www.fishin-canada.net/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5628


More big smallies

July 13th, 2012

I was back on the water with my dad today.  He hadn't been on the water for a while so I asked him what he wanted to fish and his answer was no surprise.... He wanted to catch big smallies!  I headed for a new area I've been exploring lately and we spoted some good ones right away.  We were fortunate to have blue skies and low winds to be able see them cruising on sand flats.  Catching those shallow smallies was no easy task... We had to creep up on them very quietly and stay as far as possible.

We caught most of our fish on senkos and tubes both shallow and deep today.  We didn't catch a ton of fish but quality was definitely there with most of the fish in the 3.5 to 4.5lbs range.

Some of the fish we caught today


Sunday, July 8, 2012

Sweet revenge on Lake St.Francis

July 8th, 2012

I was back on the water today with my good friend Gilles.  I really wanted to get my revenge from my bad tournament yesterday and boy did we catch 'em.  Our first stop was a nice sand flat with 2-3 ft of water and thankfully the smallies on it were on fire and BIG!  It was an area I had never fished before  so we started by throwing spinnerbaits and got a follower on the first cast of the day.  We quickly switched to tubes and senkos and had a 2.5lbs smallie in the boat almost instantly.  We moved around the flats and found a nice school of big smallmouths roaming.  Luckily, we stayed far enough and I managed to catch a 5.25lbs and a 4.75lbs.  Gilles missed a few fish while I was still in awe about the 2 giants I had just caught back to back.

We decided to drift an deeper channel close by and Gilles caught a 4.25 on the first pass..... We did a few more passes and managed to catch a few more fish between 2 and 3.5lbs.

Gilles is just starting to fish for bass and I wanted to show him a few tips on our to catch largemouths as well so we headed for a nearby bay and started casting frogs.  I was able to catch a nice one and Gilles missed 2 fish that blew up on his frog but for someone throwing it for the first time he was doing very good.

We finished our day on a more familiar spot were I caught a nice 4lbs but saw some big ones roaming... Lake St.Francis is such an amazing fishery and in my opinion a world class destination for some giant smallies.  I won the Econobass event back to back 2 years in a row on this lake and to win it a 3rd time would be unreal.  With Charles Sim, Jason Gramada and Nick Gendron fishing the trail this is year is not going to make it an easy task that for sure.

Giant brown fish from our day


Econobass - Long Sault 2012

July 7th, 2012

As it happenned many times in the past, practice was unfortunatly much better then tournament day.  We started with great confidence and were pumped for an awesome day of fishing on this beautiful section of the St.Lawrence river.  Overcast skies made our first area a little difficult to fish... We knew the fish were very spooky and couldn't position the boat without being seen by them.  We came back to this area several times through out the day and just couldn't convince this 4lbs + smallmouth to bite any of our baits.  Our second and third spot didn't seem to have fish on them and by 11:30, we still hadn't put a single fish in the livewell.

It's only when we decided to put plan C in action that we started catching fish.....  We fished an old road bed in a section of the river that we had never been and were able to finally put 2 fish in the boat.  An area where we had caught a few decent largemouths in practice was close by so we decided to give it a shot.  My partner Bar missed a nice one on the frog and I caught another one that didn't even make 12 inches.... Nothing to help our cause.

We decided to rotate our morning spots one last time to see if maybe the fish had moved in but only started getting bit at 2:30pm.... With 15 mins to spare I caught a 4lb and a 2lbs but weren't able to get our last fish.  We had the fish infront of us again but ran out of time and had to get back in time for the weigh in.

We are kind of dissapointed seeing as we had a good practice but these things happen and we should do much better next time were there.

Our 2 biggest of the day

A few hours of fishing after work

July 5th, 2012

Went out for a few hours after work on Lake St.Louis today with Caro and my buddy Dave.  We started flipping thick mats and found some nice fish under 'em but we had a hard time getting them out of there.... We got a few largies but the smallies seemed to be way more active.  We hit one rock pile that had quite the school on it and just kept on catching almost every cast.  Nothing huge with the biggest one around 3lbs but still a lot of fun when the bite is on.  Water temps are in steady in the 70's now and both smallies and largies are definitely in full summer pattern and eating!

Dave with a  nice chunk

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Econobass Long Sault Practice

July 1st, 2012

Vacation time means fishing time! I spent 6 of the 7 last days on the water fishing 4 different bodies of water near home this week and dedicated a few of those days to practice for our next tournament on the St.Lawrence river in Long Sault.

It was the first time for my partner and I in Long Sault so we studied maps and looked at satellite images and marked a few key areas for our practices.  Unfortunatly, weather conditions were far from ideal for fishing a new body of water... We had winds up to 50km/h on most of our practice days which made sight fishing nearly impossible.  Luckily, our last day of practice was calm and went a lot better.  We were able to find both smallies and largies relatively close to each other which makes me think we might have a mixed bag at the weigh in next week.

Few pics from our practice





FLW Tour - Lake Champlain 2012

June 28th, 2012

Caro and I decided to attend as spectators an FLW Tour event on Lake Champlain today.  I watch these guys on T.V all the time but to be able to be see them fly on the lake in person was very impressive.  We tried taking good pictures while staying very far from them but it was no easy task.  We did a bit of fishing and caught a few small largemouths but we were mostly there to see the show.

We got off the water in time for the weigh-in and what a show that was!  Granted it was only the first day of a 4 day event but I was still impressed with the whole setup FLW puts up for these events.  I can only imagine how crazy the weigh-in must be on the final day.  I've probably said this before but Lake Champlain is one heck of a fishery and I feel privileged to live less then an hour away from it.

Pics of the event