I was fishing the Ottawa river for the 3rd time this year and I was confident we could get a similar weight then the two previous trips but I was wrong. Again, July seems to be a tough month on this river as we were only able to bring back 2 fish to the weigh-in. Conditions didn't seem to bad in the morning with a NW wind of about 5-10km/h which made for a nice boat ride to our first spot.
The first area we stopped at had a few laydowns that were holding quality largies in practice but after trying to convince them for over 30 mins we decided to move on to another area close by where they had been hitting the frog pretty good a few days before. Unfortunatly, the frog bite was completly off and seemed to attract only pike. We missed a few bites flipping isolated patches of lily pads but it was no easy task when the wind picked up. We had to move quite a bit before I finally hooked a small largemouth that ended up being the only largie of the day.
It was about noon when we decided to give the smallies a try. After only a few minutes I got bit with what seem to be a decent size smallmouth but it came off very quickly and we didn't get to see it. We fished a very shallow rock flat and a nearby drop off when Caro hooked her first smallmouth of the day but like me, it didn't stay on for very long. Caro still managed to get a tiny smallmouth for what was going to be our last fish of day. We tried maybe 3-4 more spots but couldn't get another fish in the livewell. We even tried some new areas in hope to find a place that hadn't been hit so hard by the last 3-4 tournaments over the last few weeks and eventhough we found nice stuff and saw some fish, we weren't able to convince them to bite.
The ride back to the weigh-in was simply brutal with all the pleasure craft out on the water. I wish I could practice more often on this river but it's a bit of a drive from where I live and to be honest, I can't say I love the fishing there. Regardless, I will have to go back and figure it out once and for all!
