After two weeks of activities that have kept me from fishing, I finally got out. Went to Tapps. The day began windy, making handling the boat tough on the main lake ridge I wanted to fish. Came up with an idea. Fishing plastics was almost out of the question. So I decided to fish crankbaits. But instead of using my electric motor and casting, I used my 9.9 outboard and trolled a deep diving crankbait along the 10 to 14 foot level of the ridge. I caught a couple in the first hour, but overall, it was slow. Then once while not paying attention I drifted into shallower water. So I gunned the engine to get back out deeper. My rod bent over as the plug moved faster. Immediately a smallmouth almost took the rod out of my hand. I guess they wanted it faster. From then on I trolled at a brisk clip, the rod bent hard under the faster speed. The smallies just clobbered it. I ended up catching 16 smallies using this method. As the day got brighter and wind calmed, the shallow water bite slowed. I then moved out to the 18 foot level and drug a Carolina rig with a curly tailed grub in watermellonseed. I caught another 12 before the bite shut down about ten o'clock. Nothing big but 24 smallmouth in about a three hour period is a fun day. Though not big, I took a photo of the biggest. This was the last one I caught on a crankbait that day.

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