Fly Fishing Hot July Weather

Pete Ankeny and his friends joined us on Rainy Lake Houseboats Chairman II for three days of fly-fishing for smallmouth bass July 13-15.  Guides Jon Balski, Kevin Erickson, and Bill Dougherty had the task of locating smallmouth that would be willing to take poppers off of the surface. We decided to meet for lunch and discuss what we discovered during the first morning.

Jon found smallies about 15 feet off shore. Many strikes a few boated and fish lost. I found bass to be on the first structures going into pockets or bays, we to missed a far amount of fish but did not have as many chances as Jon. Right before lunch we caught a couple nice ones on a submerged rock pile surrounded by cabbage.  Kevin found fish in the cabbage.

After lunch the temperatures climbed into the nineties.  I found bass in a current neck down with a small amount of cabbage. Pete and Dave caught bass and missed a few. We fished points with cabbage, shallow reefs with out a sniff. At 4:45 we decided to fish shallow water rock piles with a lot of weed. The next forty-five minutes we caught nice bass.

The next morning we headed out with a game plan in hand. Jon Balaski was driving to his area and saw a bass surface off a rock area with cabbage. They caught five nice ones and they stopped hitting.  Kevin had reasonable action in very shallow junky areas, places that we normally don’t fish. The same pattern held for Kevin in the afternoon except the bass waited until 5:00 PM to cooperate.

The wind picked up in the afternoon, Dave and Tom asked to fish with spinning gear. Dave was casting a 5” watermelon colored Kalin Grub.  Dave caught nice walleyes from 23-25” and bass on the same points. The heat got to be tough.

Dawn from the Chairman II

 We decided to start at 6:00 AM on the last morning thinking the bass may be on the structures early. Wrong! We did not contact bass until after 8:00 AM. We all found them in cabbage or rock and cabbage. I was fishing a nice rock and weed structure with out a sniff. Behind us a bass jumped in the middle of the bay in heavy cabbage. We moved out into the cabbage and Shell nailed a dandy, what a fight in the heavy weed growth. We continued to fish the cabbage and caught more. Dick was working a Skitter Prop in the cabbage; the bas would hit the bait and head down into the weed growth. The treble hooks would snag in the weeds and the smallmouth would get off the hook.

After lunch we fished more cabbage and they quit hitting. Jon, Kevin, and I all moved to the closest rock stuctues to the cabbage beds we were fishing. The bass went crazy, all three boats catching nice big bass literally in a feeding frenzy. We fished until 4:00 PM and headed back to the Chairman II for an early evening cruise back to base.

Pike bites on the bass