4-25 & 4-26. The perfect storm.

Mike Kauchak reports:
Temps in the upper 70's with the mother of all cold fronts moving in and wind gusts to 40mph. The technique was a no brainer. Find the windy side of the lake and run burn the rattleshad down the shoreline. Both Smallmouth and Largemouth were hammering the 36g Rattleshad. It was awesome.








Also pictured is Ken Schumacher of www.smalliefishing.com.

Jamie reports:
Ok..so I struck out on friday. Notice how I'm not in those pictures above. In the 30 minutes to fish, I went exploring a couple hundred yards of new water and did too fast of a run and gun. Then the storms got close...add a little lightmning..and we were out of there, with a whinning Mike in tow " But I was catching fish...waaaaaaaa!"
Then the cold weather came. Temps dropped 30 degrees overnight. The winds were howling! All day long lakes and ponds were being whipped into water that looked more like YooHoo. White caps were in my 2.5 acre Lago Casa.
And ya know who didn't care at all?
The fish.
Ya see...at this time they are thinking about exactly 2 things. 1)food. 2)Sex. (kinda like most of us.). So they stayed shallow. They stayed active. They didn't care about lightning, rain, storms, drops of 30 degrees, howling winds. They actually used all of it to their advantage and instead of picking off shad that were going IN to the channele...they started picking off shad coming OUT of the channel due to the coldfront. The bass were still perfectly happy in 1-2' of muddy, ripped up water on the lake shoreline or in the now muddied ditches.
The key baits? The Savage Gear Rattle Shad and the Lewis Rattle Trap and the Lucky Craft Pointer..all burned in as fast as you can reel it. Right thru the muddy water. They have no problem going after the sound and hitting the lure. Trust me on that.
On another site I got into quite the little squabble with a fellow angler about WHERE we fish. As you know Mike and I along with our crew fish everywhere. If we fish it, you read it here. From the Mississippi to Chicago to Ontario to Florida to The Arctic Circle. Lately Mike and i have been hitting lakes, ponds and ditches. No rivers yet for us. We're leaving that job to Jade for now.
So... where do we catch HUGE smallies?
How about spots like this.

Ripped up muddied lakeshore

Or these spots?


Muddied 1-2' deep roadside ditches that hook up to lakes,ponds and rivers. packed with shad, baitfish and..oh..HUGE smallies and largemouth.

The end result?




So basically I just took the "classic" smallie spots of rocky pristine streams and threw them in the crapper. I also took the whole "fish dont bite after a massive cold front" and threw THAT in the crapper too. Oh..and I also took "big,bright,slower baits in muddy water" and threw THAT in the crapper.
Anybody got anything else they want disproved this week?
Listen..sometimes the fish don't read the same books that you do. You never know til you get out there and try, even when the weather turns to crap and every sign says "the fish aren't biting." .....wanna bet?