I was invited by a friend to participate at the ProBass Canada Classic as an observer today. I always say the best way to learn is to watch how other more experienced anglers catch fish. Eventhough I have been fishing mostly for bass in the last few years I always learn TONS when i'm fishing with someone I've never fished with before. There was a draw before the blast off and I was lucky to get a team of experienced anglers... They knew the lake pretty well since they both lived in Cornwall and they were fishing an area where I had already been in the past. It was really nice to see the way they fished as it was very different from what I'm used to. It was nothing out of the ordinary but they were using crankbaits and zara's in the morning and even though I have all those lures, I don't usually have enough confidence to use them long enough to catch a fish. I was also surprised to see they were mostly using braid for everything... from crankbaits to drop shot. I usually like to put a fluorocarbon leader on everything when I fish clear water but they showed me it didn't matter one bit since they were catching fish after fish. The shallow bite wasn't that great so they decided to try a little deeper and apparently it was the ticket because most of their fish if not all came from 30+ fow.
I was really impressed with what they had in the livewell... I honestly though they had close to 20lbs at one point but I didn't realize that all the fish were all filled with air since they hadn't been fizzed.
They finally weighed in a bag of 17lbs and some change.... Not a bad day but far from enough in order to cut a cheque at the classic... especially on Francis!
I was lucky to witnessed some crazy weights... 7 teams came in with over 24lbs with the biggest one at nearly 28lbs!! Those are just insane weights for smallies... I can't even think of another lake that would produce so many 5lbs+ smallouths. I had heard about some big bags on Erie and Simcoe but never as big as this.
I had a lot of fun today and I will definitely take some and leave some from what I saw and i'm sure it will help me catch more fish in the future. One thing is for sure I will get my crankbaits out and give them an honest chance this time.
