Hal just returned from a trip, I believe his 10th, to the Boundary Waters of Canada. His guide service dropped him off with his canoe, fishing equipment and packs. He had to paddle and portage the canoe and etc. to his campsite on one of the myriad of lakes in the area. Keep in mind he had a quadruple bypass less than a year ago.  The fish were mostly smallmouth, or brownies. You can see in the photo the reason for the name.

There are some of these devils with plenty of teeth up there also. The second is a walleye which is good in the skillet.

Your hooks have to be barbless, which makes catching an acrobatic smallmouth rather difficult. The visibility was around 20 feet which made fishing a blast. One of the best baits was a Ribbit frog. With a smaller mouth and no barb on the hook, you can imagine how hard it was to catch a fish. Hal took 24 Ribbits and only returned with 2. Since a Ribbit is my favorite bait to fish with ,I was extremely jealous of all that action. A spinnerbait and a plastic craw were his other most productive baits. One day he caught 70 fish. Three of the smallmouth weighed 5 pounds or better. There were only two largemouth out of all the fish he caught. The scenery was pretty good too.

Click on the second photo and you can see the small horns on the young moose.

The last photo is of a gorgeous smallmouth. He has it laid out on a paddle which is a great way to photo a fish when you are by yourself. I think I’ll copy that idea if I ever catch another one worth taking a picture of.

Richard was nice enough to have me fish with him at Beaverdam again Friday. We started out the day swimming  paddletail worms with a light weight. You could feel the vibrations the tail of the worm made.  Richard caught one and looked into its mouth and was amazed to find a half digested snake.

You can see that it was all wadded up. What you can’t see is the horrible smell that was coming from the snake. Richard pulled it out with his pliers.

The wind was blowing and we seemed to catch the fish where the waves were hitting a group of cypress trees. We reached one place where we encountered fish chasing shad last week. This was out in the open. I had been thinking about that spot and put into my tackle a chartreuse One Minus bait that I had found on a limb in Lake Chicot. A few casts and out came a 4 – 11 FOD Richard caught a couple on the paddletail and I caught another on the One Minus. Since last week I also had been thinking about using a Booyah around all those Cypress trees. I caught one early, and kept picking it up during the day only to get 3 or 4  more bumps and no takers. It was a bad day for me. Richard had to earn his pay going to get my hangups loose. We ended up with 18 bass and a goo. It’s been a snakey week for me. I saw this jewel in the woods the other day while looking for a place to bowhunt.  It would make a beautiful bracelet or necklace.

Richard invited me to Beaverdam,of Nash Buckingham fame, today to fish. I met him there at 6:30. Beaverdam is a cypress lake with mostly shallow water, meaning you can stick your rod down and hit the bottom almost anywhere. We started with paddle tail worms marketed through Basspro. They have a great buzz or thump when you give them a little pull. We were dippin’ and dunkin’ mostly at close range. We caught some early but after about 10 things seemed to shut down somewhat. We ended up with 10 bass and two Catfish. The FOD sat and chewed on the bait before finally blasting off after it felt the hook and it was finally realized that there was indeed a fish chewing on the bait. 4 – 13. Richard was a little disappointed with 10 because they have been catching in the mid 20’s. I was happy for us to be in the double digits for a change of pace for me.