Pacemaker Fishing Forum

I got a chance to spend a couple of days with my brother recently at his house on Lake Mahopac in Carmel NY. It's a beautiful 587 acre, healthy lake that holds both smallmouth and largemouth bass, although the smallmouth dominate here. I arrived around 0730 Sunday morning. After loading my gear in the boat we pushed off in search of schools of bait that have been holding the fish. Within 5 minutes of leaving the dock we started catching. Here was my first.



We were focusing on the schools of herring which were being balled up by the bass.



We dropped blade baits and jigs down into them. The fish often hit on the way down. You would feel sudden slack in the line and the fish were swimming up with the bait. It often took 5 to 10 cranks of the reel to catch up with them. We had multiple doubles and all of the fish were between 2 and 4 lb. We did get some smaller ones but not in the bait schools.



One of my better ones



Both Sunday and Monday we would fish from early morning to mid to late morning and again after lunch and had similar results with the smallmouth. We rested mid afternoon and got back on the water for the evening bite. I focused mainly on topwater and the Z-Man Pop Shadz did not disappoint. I had plenty of topwater explosions to keep me happy. This bait is quickly becoming one of my favorite poppers. It draws fish, it's a single hook and, since it's soft, the fish hang on to it.

 

When it got dark we came off the water, showered up and had dinner. Then around 9:30 or 10:00 PM we headed back out for an hour or two of night fishing. Again I focused on topwater with a custom made Choopy swimmer. Some of you have these and if you're not fishing them late evening or at night you are missing out. The fish were exploding on these aggressively. They out fished all other lures in the dark.



At night is when we found mostly largemouth bass in the weed beds with an occasional smallmouth thrown in. Again, both nights had plenty of action to keep us busy and topwater was as good, if not better, than fishing down in the weeds.



All told between the smallmouth, largemouth, one or two bluegills and a handful of rock bass, I landed around 40 to 45 fish in the two days. My brother easily had that many or more. More importantly I got to spend quality time with my brother and sister-in-law on a beautiful lake. Its a 5 hour drive from here but I can't wait to go back.

Last edited by Paul Naj (Sep-18-17 2:54PM)