Fishing Forum

I fished the Preston area over the weekend and had a decent time. I fished most the lakes in the area over the 4 days and the weather was as good as it gets. I started out at Lamont Thursday evening and hit the LMB. Nothing over 12.5", but there were a lot of them. Caught some Blue Gill and Perch also, but threw them all back as they were all to small to deal with.

I then hit Jonhson the next morning. There are tons of BG. but nothing of any size really. I did keep a few for dinner tho along with a few small Perch. Caught quite a few LMB, but nothing of any size. I did hook one that was a keeper, but it spit the hook next to the toon. I did see a nice Tiger Muskie hiding in a willow brush. I tried to get a picture, but no luck. I also tried to get him to bite with no luck. He was in the 30" range. That evening I hit Winder with no luck. Seen a few small bass, and a ton of minnows, but that was it.

Saturday morning I hit Glendale before the skiers and wake boarders. Boy, was that place packed. I only fished for bass, and it was slow. I did land a nice 16" LMB tho. I missed quite a few hits since I ran out of hooks and tried to improvise. That afternoon I found a store in Preston that had some hooks.For the evening I hit Condie. Seemed a little slow there also, but did manage a few in the 16" range, but nothing over 20" limit.

Sunday morning I hit Lamont again. This time I found the BG and Perch that were bigger. The Perch were in the 8"-10" range with the BG not far behind. Had a great dinner from those guys. The bass were plenty as usual, but nothing over 12". I did manage to catch a few Rainbows, but all planters and small. Also the GF caught a Crappie, but it was only about 4"-5". The clouds came in about noon, so I headed back and took a nap. Wow, what a rain storm. It had to dump at least an inch. Puddles were every where. I later seen some flooding and flash flood evidence on the way home Monday. Places where the hiway had water over it and roads that were washed out. After the rain we went for a drive to Onieda Reservoir. We took the Maple Grove Hot springs road. What a muddy mess. There were wash outs in the road and when we got to the reservoir it was chocolate milk color. I did not bother with fishing it. We drove around for a bit and ended up at Glendale again. Did not do any good there. I think the storm turned everything off. Fished for about 4 hours with not even a bite. It started raining at sunset and rained all night off and on.

We packed up and headed home Monday morning since I had a few things to get done around the house. It was a good weekend. The worse crowds were at Glendale. Everything else was not to bad. This is the first time I have fished for warm water fish on Memorial weekend. I usually hit Henry's or something similar for trout. I did not miss the combat fishing or the trout.
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some nice pictures there. I was going to try for crappie at glendale on sunday but figured it would be a zoo. I had never heard of a smb being caught out of there.
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I forgot to post the pic of the SMB. I am new to this bass fishing thing also, so correct me if I am wrong. Here is the pic of it.
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Nope! That is a LMB, but a great report and pix!!! I was at Condie Saturday morning and fished for a few hours. Posted on the Utah board though (didnt give away my location []). There are a few pix on my post!!! I love those Preston Area Waters, been fishing them for all my life!!!
TS
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That's good to hear that there are at least a few bass left in Winder. Maybe it will get back to normal eventually. Hopefully those minnows were young gamefish of some kind.
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the small mouths have red eyes easy way to tell the diffrence
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Great report and pics. What were you catching the largemouth on if you don't mind me asking? I might get down there on Sat.

Windriver
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awesome darren that smallmouth turned out to be a descent largemouth lol looks like you had a good time. im heading to glendale next weekend.
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Most fish were on a 3" Pumpkin S/P grub. Motor Oil with red flake worked also as did BlueGill. I did do ok with a Fire Tiger Rapala on a couple of lakes.

I fished Glendale by the dam. I had a guy I chatted with say the other end was a lot better in the willows. I drove down that way, but could not find a place to put the toon in. Guess you would need a boat to get to that area.

Ok, so it is a LMB. The more I looked at it, the more I knew I was wrong. I thought it was a lot darker when I caught it and that is what threw me off, not to mention it was right at the boat dock when I caught it and I was in a hurry trying to stay out of peoples way. The only SMB I have caught then has been on Onieda Res.
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[quote jigs]the small mouths have red eyes easy way to tell the diffrence[/quote]
I will have to see if I can file this into the old memory bank. That makes things a lot easier.

Do bass change color or become more colorful when spawning like trout do?
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Prvrt,

IMHO looking for red eyes is not always the best way since SMB do not always have that feature. In the spawn, there is not a significant change in color although that is when I have noticed the red eyes to be most prominent.

IMHO the best way to tell the difference is that SMB striations are same as perch -- 90 degrees to the length of the body -- in a radial direction. The LMB striations are axial or along the length of the body and usually just one prominent striation at midline.

If you can't see any striations and the fish is just pale green it is an SMB in a strange color variation.

The deal about the jaw ending behind the eye on LMB is more difficult to figure out IMHO, just as your picture shows.

FR
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It seems weird but I think I can tell the difference a lot easier when bass are small rather than when they are larger. It also seems that the LMB get darker as they get bigger. I should have taking a picture of that LMB from the top. It looked like he had the vertical striping when looking at him from the top. That was the main reason I was thinking SMB. I will figure it out sooner or later. It is kind of like the difference between Blue Gill and Green Sunfish. They look alike at first, but once you catch a few you can start to tell the difference. Then throw in a hybrid of the two and just when you think you have it all figured out, everything looks different, or the same again.
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