Guided Bass Trips 9/1 and 9/2

[GuidedBassTrips]

Saturday and Sunday of Labor Day weekend I had Ray Young and his friend Chakula for 2 guided days of bass fishing on Black Lake. They are from Schenectady and had never been to the area before. I told them that Black Lake was a good choice for a holiday weekend because the lake typically doesn't see the recreational boat traffic other bodies of water in the state will see. Yes it was busy but alot more of them are fisherman.

The first day was difficult. Yes the algae bloom is still in effect, but the slow fishing to me was more because Saturday was bright with north winds. I had been out by myself on Friday and thought the largemouth were biting pretty good on artificials. But it was cloudy that day and threatening storms with a strong south wind, and I think they were just biting better. Ray is good with a baitcaster and they also brought their own tackle. So I spent the entire morning positioning the boat in some of the same areas and using what I was using on Friday. I really like the new swimbaits. They are very weedless and can be thrown anywhere you throw a frog. I throw one that looks like a bluegill and they were eating it up on Friday. Ray caught one nice largemouth on it but today wasn't the day for fast moving baits. I wanted to avoid having them throw a senko but had to resort to it so they would get some bites. Later on, I picked up some crayfish and they caught a couple of nice smallmouths but that bite was slow too. But this was a new lake to them and they were still enjoying their experience. And of course the boat traffic was heavy by now and they seemed to expect that.

On day two the bite was much better. There were some clouds now, but the wind did still stay from the northeast. This time I talked them into fishing with the crayfish more and they caught alot of smallmouth. Now they were counting their fish and ribbing each other. On one shoal, Ray caught 6 in a row that bit it on the initial drop before the action slowed. They proceeded to catch some more there and Chakula finally got in on the action. The bite picked up more later in the afternoon and the largemouth were starting to come around. Ray then catches the biggest smallmouth and immediately hooks up with a big largemouth that unfortunately jumped and threw the hook near the boat. They ended up catching between 20 and 30 bass between them and were still catching them at the end. All bass were released.