I hit the Grand River today and fished for a few hours this morning. I was hopping to catch some lake-run small mouth bass. The lake-run bass are bass that live in the lake and move into the rivers just to spawn. These fish are much larger than the resident small mouth bass that spend their whole lives in the river. Lake Erie is known to be one of the best small mouth bass fisheries in the world. This offers the river angler a chance at catching a trophy class small mouth… and these fish will readily take a fly. So I was out there in search of a trophy small mouth. I got to the river at about 6:45am. I quickly had my first hook up, a nice sized rock bass. Perhaps, the largest rock bass I’ve every caught. A little while later I hooked into a nice sized fish and it fought like it could be a smallie, but it was not. It turned out to be a good sized white bass, in fact, the first white bass I’ve ever caught. I continued fishing and caught a few more white bass, all smaller than the first one I caught. I’m wondering why I can’t entice any small mouth. Are they on the redds and not biting? I continued to fish and worked it hard. I hooked up in a boulder strewn run and the fish leaps out of the water and tail dances across the surface of the water; it was a huge small mouth bass!!! My first lake run fish ever and boy was it big compared to the resident fish I am used to catching. I took some pics and released the fish to spawn a new generation of these wild native fish. I kept on fishing as I had about a half hour before I was going to leave and I hooked into another lake-run smallie. I was on the water for about 4 hours and I caught 6 or 7 fish (I can’t remember if I caught 3 or 4 white bass). It was a good day on the water and I got my first lake-run bass. I caught all these fish stripping clouser minnows in white and chartreuse and in black.
