Upstate NY Bass Smackdown

[NickM221]

I recently went upstate with the family to spend a few days at a friend's lake house. Over the course of the week, we had pretty consistent action with catches including smallmouth, largemouth, rockbass, panfish, perch, and pickerel. The majority of fish came in 10-15 feet of water off of rock ledges and weed beds. Most of the bass seemed to be in the 14-16 inch range, with a few bigger ones mixed in, but almost all of the fish looked like they were post-spawn and super skinny.

One morning, we woke up to pouring rain. I decided to brave the rain, but unfortunately no one else wanted to get wet, so I wound up having to balance out the canoe with some big rocks.



I saw fish busting out in the middle of the lake, so I started the day off there with a whopper plopper. I caught smallmouth and white perch nearly every cast for about an hour. After the action in that spot died down, I worked my way around the edge of the lake, throwing the plopper and some homemade swimbaits. I caught some smallmouth (including this zombie smallie), a bunch of largemouth in the 2-3 pound range, and missed a giant pickerel.



I closed out my first 100+ fish day by catching the biggest largemouth of the trip on a homemade swimbait. She had a head that was similar in size to the 5.5 lber I caught earlier this year, but her body was super thin.





Here's a few of the other big fish caught throughout the week including some 19"+ smallies that came on homemade swimbaits and an 11" bluegill that hit a plopper.









Here's a shot of some of the swimbaits before they were sealed/epoxied:

[akoop]

Nice job, great that the lures you made caught so many fish!

[AndyS]

Nice bass, looks like you had a great time !

[JDTuna]

Great job, Nick!

[Esox Luciano]

Sounds like a good trip man. Nice pics! I'm liking the lures too. What'd you wind up using to fabricate the bodies?

[thmyorke1]

Thats the biggest pumpkin seed ive seen :0

Sounds like some great fishing, smallie gardens!

[FASTEDDIE29]

Whopper Plopper is super deadly up there. You had some awesome fishing bro! Great fish and pics and those swim baits are beautiful. Well done!!!

[MasiJC]

Nice fish and those swim baits look awesome!

[NJSquatch]

Nice report. That is one sick looking smallmouth

[NickM221]

Originally Posted by Esox Luciano

Sounds like a good trip man. Nice pics! I'm liking the lures too. What'd you wind up using to fabricate the bodies?

I made a mold of a wooden lure I carved and pour FeatherLite plastic into the mold in order to create the copies. Seems to work pretty well so far! I think I've seen you make some wooden lures too if I remember correctly. If you ever want to do a trade let me know