Ice cold bronze

[Chrisper4694]

Salt water got canceled late so instead, headed out to in search of eyes. Had to go solo as no one could join last minute. Got there at 6am and launched into the pitch dark fog. Pretty eerie...heard some owls hooting and even what I'm fairly sure was a pack of wolves howling, maybe coyotes, idk how to tell the difference.

I couldn't get any eyes to bite but as the sun came up a bit I marked a nice school of fish in a bare weed pocket. I assumed they were crappie after they kept rising and ignoring my bigger jigs and I wasn't getting any hits on the shadow rap or swimbait. So I grabbed my ultra light with a mini jigging rap and found out the hard way...not crappie haha.

It turned out to be a big fat smallie which I could not control at all with the ultra light. Got him near the boat though...and here's where a partner would've come in handy...I took my eyes off it for a second to grab the net and it launched itself 2 ft out of h e water and spit that lure right at my face! Early Sunday morning rage monster!!!

I was pretty rattled and ended up loosing the next one in similar fashion (although thankfully it was a much smaller one). Finally gained my composure and landed my third hook up, an average sizer. The marks disappeared after that and I started covering ground. I picked up another average bass hitting the wind blown shore points with a shadow rap and finally, a bit later, got hit by a train jigging one of my flies. It ended up being a real nice 17 3/4" bronze that hit and fought like a fish twice its size! Wind gusts picked up shortly after so I called it a day.

Surface Water was 60 degrees and I had ice on my rods...wtf...make up your mind Mother Nature! Haha

[xDirty]

Amazing small mouth. Never caught anywhere near that size.

[JDTuna]

Big smallmouth for sure! Nice work on the bronze, certainly wasn't comfortable out there yesterday!

[ratherbe]

Chunky fall SMB are always fun and worth getting out there for. Great catch

[bunker dunker]

great fish Chris,congrats

[Bruce Litton]

Nice fish, nice story.

[Esox Luciano]

That's a great lookin smallie bro, good catch!! Must've been a blast when he hit on the Ultralight!

[Chrisper4694]

that's not the one that hit the ultra lite, i lost that one! that one looked much bigger than the pictured one (maybe 20 inches or so)....and yes it was fun til it rocket out of the water and spit my lure! hahaha. that one was fun too though, it hit like a truck. on the ugly stick i use to jig flies.

[FASTEDDIE29]

Good fish!!!:d