FISHING: Shifting Gears for Smallies

By Brad Dokken

WALKER, Minn. – Chip Leer got the 21-foot Ranger he’d borrowed from a friend up on plane and hit the afterburners for the far side of the lake.

With a 225-horse Evinrude running the show, that wouldn’t take long.

"The landing is at this end – we fish at that end," Leer, of Walker, said as we flew across the water. "The fishing’s always better on the other side. I learned that guiding years ago."

Leer, 43, got his start in the fishing industry guiding anglers on Lake of the Woods, Kabetogama and, later, Leech Lake and other waters in the Walker area. These days, he hosts the outdoors TV show, "Fishing the Wildside," and is one of the most recognizable faces in Minnesota fishing circles.

And on days off such as this one, he goes fishing. Just for fun.

In a state where walleye fishing borders on religion, Leer sometimes finds himself at odds with doctrine by pursuing species such as smallmouth bass, our target on this day.

There’s a lot to like about smallmouths, Leer says. They’re scrappy, for one thing, and they’ll usually hit a lure if you can get it in front of their faces.

But in Minnesota, at least, bass – both smallmouths and largemouths – often are overlooked. Even as a guide, Leer says, convincing clients to fish bass was a challenge.

"It was always after the walleye thing, after we had enough fish for shore lunch," he said. "That was the predominant attitude."

Bass-orific

There’d be no arm-twisting to fish bass on this day, a near-perfect example of mid-June with a manageable wind and partly cloudy skies. Leer and a buddy had fished this particular lake – which shall remain nameless – about 10 days earlier and found the male smallmouths congregated in shallow water on the "spawning beds," protecting the eggs female bass had laid a few days earlier.

Signs of the beds, which appeared as dark-colored circles in the sandy shallows, were everywhere.

"We fished from about 1 to 7, and we guesstimate we caught 75 to 90 bass" that afternoon, he said. "It was literally doubles all day."

Things happen fast in nature, though, and a lot can change in 10 days. The smallmouths aren’t far away, Leer says; it’s just a matter of finding them.

"It’s pretty simple, straightforward fishing," he said. "In early June, they move up on the gravel and spawn. They’ll also spend time around the edges."

Short wait

We start by tossing tube jigs and small spinner/plastic combos off the edge of a sandy point that drops from 2 feet to 65 feet in a matter of yards. The water temperature is 68 degrees.

Leer strikes first, fooling a fish with a tube jig, but this bass is the stumpy, green variety with red, googley eyes.

Rock bass, or as Leer calls ‘em, "Rocky Rococo."

"It’s a bass, but it’s the wrong kind," he says.

The wait for a second fish isn’t long.

"There we go," Leer says, as the chunky smallmouth rockets out of the water in the way bass do. "That’s what there’s a whole lot of."

Brownish-bronze with dark vertical bars running down its flanks, the smallmouth is a picture of beauty. Leer admires the fish for a moment and lets it go; the bass quickly disappears from sight in the crystal-clear water.

I follow up a few minutes later with a 17-incher that takes a nonchalant swipe at my spinner the first cast, only to slam it the next. Watching the whole encounter unfold is better than any video game.

Even Leer is impressed.

"He follows it up, you recast and he hits it," Leer says. "How do you not love that?"

Bass that were concentrated in the shallows 10 days earlier now are scattered, and the spawning beds are mostly uninhabited. That’s common, Leer says, because the males only guard the beds a week or so before sliding into deeper water.

We’re catching fish, but we have to work for them.

"It’s weird – one here, one here, one there," Leer says. "Where are they?"

Whether bass or any other species, the hunt is part of the fun, though, and we probe other locations that produced fish the previous week. The effort is largely unproductive, and we land only a handful of smaller largemouth bass and the occasional "Rocky Rococo" for our efforts.

No company

Only a handful of other boats dot the lake on this weekday, and all of them appear to be targeting walleyes. On a bright, sunny day in gin-clear water, that’s usually an exercise in futility until dusk or after dark.

So why not fish bass? Leer says there’s probably a dozen good smallmouth lakes within 20 miles of Walker, and even more hold largemouths. That’s a lot of fishing opportunity being overlooked.

"You talk about smallmouth bass in central Minnesota, I don’t think a lot of anglers even know they’re in the lake," Leer said. "There’s a lot of really good bass fishing in Minnesota. I think it’s one of the best opportunities we have in the state."

And yet many anglers refuse to shift from walleyes, even when the fishing’s poor.

"You don’t get penalized for going to catch fish and have fun," Leer said. "No one’s going to slap your wrist for deciding to change species."

Black Beauty

The sun has burned away the morning clouds, and the air has warmed considerably when we head back to the shallows. Maybe, Leer says, the warming water will attract more bass.

Then we see it, a dark form rolling on the surface. Leer at first mistakes it for a loon emerging from a dive. We get a closer look and see it’s a smallmouth.

The fish takes a nonchalant swipe at Leer’s tube jig but misses. The sizeable, jet-black form disappears under the shadow of the boat.

We spend the next 20 minutes trying to catch the bass. Small spinners, tube jigs, plastic worms … nothing will coax the bass into biting. We give it a nickname, "Black Beauty," and talk in whispers for fear of spooking the fish.

Finally, Leer ties on a Skitter Pop, a surface bait that produces a hollow "bloop" sound as he works it across the water.

Bloop. Pause. Bloop. Pause.

This apparently is more than the bass can take, and it rises to the lure. It hits, but the strike is hardly explosive.

Watching the strike is still a thrill, though, and Leer lands the bass. It’s a chunky smallmouth, maybe 17 or 18 inches, but the fish looked bigger in the water.

"They’re just not sparky today, I don’t know why," Leer says of the nonchalant strike.

A pattern emerges

The fish was like a signal, though, and the shallows seem to come alive with roving bass. A pattern begins to emerge:

"The bass are in shallow rock or rubble and the breaklines into deeper water," Leer says. "We haven’t found anything on clean sand."

The smallmouths become increasingly "sparky" over the next couple of hours, and the action is nearly constant. They eagerly rise to hit the surface baits we throw at them.

Bloop. Pause. Bloop. Slam.

This is sight fishing at its finest.

"It’s fun because it’s so vivid," Leer said. "Let’s put it this way, the fish activity levels have increased all day long."

The sun is just beginning its western descent when we decide to end on a high note and call it a day. We’ve landed and released probably 40 smallmouths, most of them measuring 14 to 18 inches, most of them in the last two hours.

There are no monsters in the bunch, but all of the bass put on a good show at the end of our lines.

"This is probably the nicest day I’ve been on the water all summer," Leer said.

The only thing missing was other anglers.

Dokken reports on outdoors. Reach him at 780-1148, (800) 477-6572 ext. 148 or bdokken@gfherald.com.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Grand Forks Herald, N.D.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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