set up camp Thursday night, caught a few bass off of the boat launch while waiting for friend to park the truck after putting the boat into the water. Water temp. was a bit cold, 56, cooled down from the week before.

3 of us in the boat, we were using spinners, chartreuse, pumpkin and red plastic jigs and crawdad imitation jigs. Spinners were doing the best. Even though the wind was blowing hard, in the morning we hit the non-windy parts around steamboat and barker canyon. Did very well catching some very nice smallies up to 3 lbs.

later in the day we went south of steamboat and braved the huge waves down there but were still catching plenty of bass...it was like ocean fishing for bass with the large swells from 2' - almost 4' being pushed down there by the winds out of the north, very unusual for banks lake.

Wound up for the day with 64 bass for the day, not bad, but not as good as it can get, still very good for the conditions, seeing as how the bow-mount motor was out of the water about as much as it was in because of the big waves.

Nice thing was that we had the whole lake south of steamboat rock to ourselves as the waves were so big down there.

Even caught a nice 7 lb. walleye on a crawdad imitation jig....threw it back to give the walleye guys more fish to catch!! I love BASS!!

Some of the bass had already spawned and others were just coming up to spawn, didn't see many beds at all because of the waves.

Sat. and Sun we had to really work for the bass as the water was colder and the weather was sending the bass down, down down....we found them in the 25' - 40' range on the bottom, but just out from where they usually spend time on the beds this time of year.

Even though the fishing was slower and deeper, we caught 22 bass Saturday and had several over 3 lbs. Sunday our numbers went down to 12 but we only fished until around 9 am. biggest bass of the weekend was a nice fat 3lb. 14 oz. female.....she was weighed and sent back to her bedding area.

will be watching the weather very closely for the next few weeks, looking for about 5 days in a row of nice sunny weather which will trigger the bass spawn and some fantastic fishing on this lake.

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