Show three was all set to go when I received an unexpected cancellation from my guest due to work commitments. As luck would have it, my neighbor Mike made a call to a friend who watches the show and was able to get me a great guest on short notice. A few quick phone calls and we arranged to meet at the highway ramp at 7 am.
After I got that out of the way I spent an hour or so going over the boat and getting some tackle ready for the morning. I try and provide a mix of product for the guests to use as well as balance the tackle for what I think will work when we hit the lake. I rigged up half a dozen Crucial rods in medium and medium heavy, one 6’8” Cumara MH and one G Loomis NRX. I spooled up some Stradic and Symetre reels with 8lb Suffix siege green, one with 20 lb Power Pro and another with the new Power Pro Super8Slick. I had just picked the Power Pro Slick up and was eager to give it a try.
I picked up my guest, Kim Norris, at our prearranged spot and our show producer Shawn was there right behind me so we headed in to the lake. Kim was so keen to go fishing with us that he had been at our meeting spot since 6 am so he wouldn’t be late. It is always fun when you get someone that is just plain wound up and ready to go.
Kim is recently retired from his position as Director of the Student Union Building at the University of New Brunswick. He has had almost a lifelong involvement with the sport of rowing and has coached the Provincial Rowing Team, the 1987 Pan Am Team and the World Student Games. He told me he was priveledged to have coached some world class athletes. He has received awards as Provincial Coach of the Year and as Canadian Coach of the Year. In addition he is on the Wall of Fame here in NB as a Builder. The Builder award is reserved for those individuals who have made a significant and sustained contribution to the growth and development of sport in the Province of New Brunswick. While talking with Kim about his years in coaching it would take a book to describe the level of commitment he gave to the sport of Rowing.
Kim has never been in a bass boat before and he was quite taken with the Stratos and amazed at the size of the big 225 Rude Etec hanging off the back. He was a little bit more than impressed when we cleared the cove and I pinned the throttle for the run across the lake. He was watching the screen on the HDS8 as we ran and wanted to know what all the skull and crossbones on the screen indicated. I told him rocks and it is no place to run until you have learned your way around. No maps or charts available for these lakes.
We started off shallow in pads and grass and hoped that the low light conditions would have the smallies up shallowand feeding. They didn’t disappoint. I had started Kim off with a Zoom Horny Toad with the Cumara, Symetre reel and 20 lb Power Pro Slick. This was the line I wanted to try out for myself. I couldn’t get the rod away from him once he got started so it will have to wait for another day. The great thing about fishing the Toad this way is the rod gives you the long casts you need to cover water and the Power Pro gives you the ability to set the hook on those long casts. No stretch is a big help when you get hit at the end of the cast.
I picked up a 6’6” Crucial / Stradic combo rigged with regular 20lb Power Pro. I had spliced in a length of 12 pound fluorocarbon as a leader and rigged a Red Shad TriggerX Flutter Worm on a 4/0 wide gap Gamakatsu hook. Both baits caught fish off and on all morning but I had no luck trying to get Kim to switch with me. He was hooked on those explosive top water strikes he was getting with the Toad. On the surface, even the misses can be exciting. I picked up a few extra fish by fan casting a copper Blue Fox in the open pockets between the pad beds but the bigger fish all came on plastics.
The bite was nice and steady until about 1 pm and then it slowed down quite a bit. We spent the last couple of hours working the edges of some fairly heavy pencil reeds with about 3 feet of water along the edge. It was a scattered bite and we spooked more fish out of the reeds than what we caught. The sky started to get quite dark and threatening about three so we motored down closer to the ramp and tried a bit of drop shotting in deep water. We dropped a marker on a massive school of bait and worked all around it for a while with only a perch to show for our efforts.
At the end of the day we had caught a bunch of Yellow Perch, about 20 nice Smallies and one Fall Fish. In case you don’t know the Fall Fish looks like an over sized Chub but it is listed as a separate species. I took a nice close up picture so everyone can have a look.
All in all it was a great day on the water and I had the pleasure of fishing with a really good guy. It doesn’t get any better than that.
Rick Greene
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