Howie and I hooked and lost a couple honkers last week on Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior. Mine was likely a gigantic smallmouth bass. We never saw it. Howie’s was for sure a big northern pike but it severed his bass leader in seconds. Today we left Washburn at sunrise with hopes of redemption.
While normally we begin Chequamegon days with a couple of hours dredging for lake whitefish, this morning we were committed to the ones that got away. We drove directly to our smallmouth and pike place and went to work. While we both had pike rigs on board (big flies with wire) first plan of attack were the smallies. For me that means my 6-weight Air 2 Winston, sinking line, a 10 foot level 16lb Fluoro leader and a chartreuse and white Clouser Minnow. Howie had about the same only his fly was more of an orange and tan.
It was our first cool morning in a while despite a rising sun. There’s Canadian smoke in the air and there’s not doubt it slows the suns heating process. There was very little wind but enough to give us that perfect chop on the water to make it harder for the fish to see a crashing fly line, or us for that matter.
Things started slow. Its just the way Superior has been for us this summer. I had that fishy feeling like we were both going to go tight on one of our first casts. But it wasn’t that way. After an hour of casting with nothing we looked at each other with surprise. In the early part of the day its hard to see exactly where you are so we thought perhaps we were off our location some. But no. Howie checked his phone app and we had no excuses. We were on the money spot.
Two hours in our persistence paid off. It was Howie that went tight first. We knew by the fight he had a nice smallie. He put the heat to the fish and I slipped the net under. A beautiful smallie for sure. But not the Chequamegon size we were looking for. Nonetheless the skunk was out!
We started getting a few follows after the first fish and some of them were 20” plus smallies. Chequamegon Bay produces trophy bass all the time. I started switching flies to try and entice. It’s been kind of a goal to catch a big smallmouth on a popper on Lake Superior and I went to work on it. I fished a Ben Byng hot orange popper for an hour. That was probably too long but I had one big bass follow and that kept me going. But nothing. In the meantime Howie landed a second smallie but this fish still wasn’t what we were hoping for.
I rarely do this, but I went on a fly changing binge. We had enough following yet fly refusing smallies around that it was worth trying to crack the code. Folks give me a lot of cool flies when I’m at the shows in the winter. This unique fly was given to me by Steve Duckett in CA. It looks unreal in the water but these bass gave it the fin as they did to most our flies. It did nail a few nice yellow perch however.
Eventually I circled right back to my old standby, the chartreuse and white Clouser again. Low and behold, I went tight. I finally stuck a nice smallie and landed him. Again, not the size we were after but I too was on the board.
Despite hours of working over our big fish spot it was another slow day on Lake Superior. If we had left at noon, we could say the day was decent with three smallies. But instead we worked our spot and other spots hard all day. And when I say all day, we made our last casts at 8:05 PM. I should mention, we did catch a few more smallies in a different location but they were smaller than the ones pictured. I got severed by a pike as well.
We probably would have fished longer than 8 PM but a few storms lingered over Bayfield and the open water of the big lake. The wind picked up a few times as well. The one thing you don’t want to do here is get caught on Lake Superior if the winds of November come early.
A few weeks back I mentioned how Howie and I weren’t getting out together enough. We’re happy to have changed this a bit in the last couple weeks. It’s been great and we intend to keep the trend going. We ended today with delicious burgers just before the kitchen closed at Patsy’s. Good stuff!
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