Thanks Jimbo for posting my picture. I wasn’t sure how to shrink down a photo so I could post it on QJ. 

I found an old pic of a huge smallie my brother in law caught in Kawnipi back in the early 1980’s. We were trolling live crawler spinner harnesses ( back when live bait was legal) with bottom bouncers in 10-25 ft of water on a 4th of July trip. We came to a sharp drop off of 40 ft and abruptly turned my MN II to get back to shallower water. Just then this big suspended smallie hit and the battle was on.

We thought it was a big walleye,  but then it did a high jump as smallies usually do and then we knew he had a smallie. It was huge with immense length and girth.  He landed it and I snapped a photo with one of those old portable Kodak cameras. We had no scale or tape measure with us. So we will never know it’s exact weight and size. But my brother in law stands 6’2” and weighs 240. So you can use his size as a reference point as to how big that smallie was.

Can’t wait to get back up to Quetico in 2023 and enjoy the wilderness with my fav paddling buds and fish for walleye, smallies and lakers.