Well, since fishing seems to be the theme of late here on Simply Outdoors, I figured I would continue the trend.

On Wednesday evening my dad, Jim, his friend, Tim, and I all headed to a classic smallmouth spot on the Grand River. The area we frequent is usually a fun spot to go because the wading is not known to be difficult.

When we arrived to our destination we quickly noticed that the water level was down quite a bit from what it usually is. As mentioned, this makes for easy wading, but as we quickly found out, it also makes fishing a little more difficult – or so we thought! The weeds seemed to get the best of us at first, so we moved farther upstream from where we usually fish. We managed to find some small “holes” that were holding a few smallies. Between the three of us, we managed to land a few fish within the first hour or so.

With about an hour of daylight left, I decided, for whatever reason, to switch from a jig with a spinner on it, to a baby torpedo topwater lure. I am glad I did. The fishing “switch” was officially turned on. Those of you who have experienced something like this know exactly what I am talking about.

My first 7 casts with the lure provided 7 hits and 5 smallmouth landed. Most of the fish caught here are not known to be much over 12-14 inches, but they are amazing fighters and acrobats. It was an absolutely amazing hour of fishing. I went on to catch about a dozen or so smallies, while missing some along the way.

Now the funny part of the evening was that I was the only angler who managed to bring a topwater lure. I gladly would’ve shared my lures with the other two guys, but I only managed to grab one single torpedo. It was a last minute decision as we were getting our gear on to head down river. I just happened to glance in the tackle box and something told me to grab it and throw it in my vest. I’m glad I made that choice!

We learned one thing:  late season fishing for smallmouth (and as I learned on Labor Day, Largemouth too!), can be an absolute blast. Between the three of us we managed to catch about 20-25 smallmouth in less than a couple hours. I’m sure most fisherman wouldn’t turn down those numbers!

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