Po

[Bassboss]

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend the whole day fishing with one of my good friends Nathaniel. The plan was to hit both the Lower Red Lake, Red River, and Upper Red lake by the evening.

He was at my house with his boat by 8:45 on a very windy, and unseasonably cool morning. Despite the eastern wind (gusting at 35 mph) and slight chill (55ish), we were on the water by 9:00 on the Lower Red.

As you can imagine, the wind made boat control very hard, so we started on the western end of the lake by the dam. Nothing.

We motored up to the shallow weedy, cove scattered with stumps. On the way there we saw a guy in a 20' ranger fishing one of our favorite spots. He was switching between a frog and wacky rigged dinger, and frog. I on the other hand was pitching a BBB craw worm to stumps and into weed clumps and holes. Nothing.

Having the first two spots not produce anything we bite the bullet and headed to the wind blown, eastern side of the lake by the lower dam. We both stuck with the same thing, with the exception of him now throwing a taxas rigged worm into the mix. Not long after getting there I whack a 14 incher on the craw worm. A ways down the bank he gets a 15 on the worm.



We make a couple more passes on that bank and it produces three more for us. Eventually the wind picks up more and head to the spot where the guy in the ranger was.

Not long after we come to a sheer rock shore line and hook up with a toad. After getting it out of the weeds and some surges under the boat he nets it. A nice 21 incher on the craw worm.



We call quits early on the Lower Red around 11 and head to the river.

As is typical we catch a few decent smallies around the 12 - 14" mark right off the bat. He hooks into a toad on a 7" texas rig worm of all things after going through a whole bag of 4" dingers to missed fish. The fish turns broad side in the current and breaks his 10lb nanofil off.

We continue to wade down stream and get some nice ones.





17 incher:







After going down stream for about 3 hours we beat the bank to make up ground to the better spots up stream a catch a couple more.






My best at the time a nice 17.5 incher:





We get to back to one of our better spots at the top of the wade and catch some of the bigger fish of the trip.

I venture up stream about 100 yards and he calls me over telling me he hooked into a slob!

I work my way over and he's got the best one of the trip... a big healthy 18.5 incher.



While we're trying to get the hook out I notice another line protruding from the fishes gullet. The pull it out a little way and see the same 7" worm and hook he broke off 3 ours ago. You can see the line coming out of the fishes mouth in the pic above.

Not long after I hook into another big fish, an 18 incher, and my biggest of the day.



We get back to the top the wade where we started and top things of with some interesting catches with the smallest of the day and huge pair of panties. lol





We wrap things up and head to the Upper Red Lake.

After hitting an island the usually produces some largemouth and coming up empty handed, we switch spots. At the end of the shore line I'm throwing a Spro frog and have a big bream jump out of the water right by my frog. What I thought was it rolls on it a couple more times before it hit it a little harder. It didn't take long to figure out a largemouth and sucked it under.

I flip it into the boat and it's another nice fish! An 18 incher.



While Nathaniel is getting things organized to head back the landing and call it a night we're watching a harron sit on top of a clump of pads and nail a big ol bream and eat it. After it fly's off I take a long cast where it was and think "maybe a little bit of blue herons magic is still there." Sure enough I get nailed a few feet from the mat and flip in the last fish of the day, another big fish at 19 inches.



We ended the day with what we figuered to be 60 smallmouth, and myself catching allot of big ones.. a 21" largemouth, a 19", and an 18 incher. 18", a 17" and a 17.5 incher. He got allot of the nicer smallmouth with three around 17 and that 18.5 incher. Not to mention allot more in the 15-16 range than I caught. I had what I figured to be one of the best days of bass fishing I've ever had.