St Lawrence River guided bass trip 7/11

[GuidedBassTrips]

Thursday 7/11 I had Phil Maranto and Chuck Prohl on board for a guided bass trip on the St. Lawrence River. Phil is a regular customer of mine in Florida. He lives in FL but is originally from Maryland. Chuck lives in Maryland and has fished Black Lake and the St. Lawrence before. They are both over 80 yrs old and still get around well for their age.

I met them at Chippewa Bay and started on a shoal on the main river. Phil had never caught a smallmouth before. I threw out a senko to show him how to work it and a smallmouth ate it first cast! I handed him the rod so he could set the hook and battle it. He was impressed with it's fighting ability and the clear water. They both caught a few more on that shoal before I had to move them to another shoal. You would think the way the day started they were going to catch alot of fish but actually the bass seem to be even more scattered than last trip. There was one shoal that had a few big ones on it though. I switched them to tubes and Chuck ended up catching both a 4lber and another 3 1/2 lber. Phil had another big one on that jumped 3 feet out of the water and threw the tube. I took them to some other areas down river where they caught some more fish around 2 lbs. It was another gorgeous calm day on the river. They were impressed by the beauty of the fishery along with those hard fighting smallmouth. They caught 15-20 bass throughout the day but I had to keep the boat moving. I do believe the spawn is finishing up and they will all be in deeper water soon, but I've learned not to rule out the shallows just yet. Channel temperature was 72 degrees which is usually about the maximum summer temperature. I did not set them up on any deep spots feeling there would be enough action in the shallows. I find from past experience the deeper fishing tends to take some time to develop and is usually better in August and September. All bass were released.