Tony right now the water temp is at 58.5 and on June 17 it will be 69.7
The day before you go in there will be a massive cold front however which will knock the fish back out of the shallows as the temp will plummet to 65.4 degrees. But be of good cheer........within a few days the sun comes out and the fish return hungrier than ever.

I know.......everyones a wise guy . I'm jealous is all.......is there anything more fun than getting on the smallys when they're up shallow?

I'll be on Isle Royale June 18 (Lord willing that is). No smallys there . Hoping to pop some leg long snaggletooths though and perhaps a few surprises.

Good luck Tony........let us know how you did

speaking of popping them off the surface.........I got sucked in   to getting one of these at Bass Pro the other day. While I usually prefer a Pop-R style topwater for Q smallies I took one look at this little sweetheart and was grabbing it off the rack before I had time to think about it.

I especially like the BB's that weigh slender belly into the water. That should give it a bit more churn in a shorter distance than say a torpedo. Plus it seems to be a bit more of a finesse bait you could use on calm water (I like a little chop when using the Pop-R type lures).

Of course the first 20" pike that takes it away from me will cause some gastronomical cramping 

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tonyt74 wrote on Jun 3^rd, 2011 at 1:52pm:



As of Saturday (6/4), surface temp. was 60-62 on the West end of Basswood. The topwater bite was great on 5/29, but a cold front and heavy winds early in the week slowed things up a bit. We actually caught some big smallies in 20+ feet (after the front) fishin' for walleye.
I'm sure the weather will be much more stable by the time you get there. Last week was "challenging" to say the least.

Good luck!

Goin in on the 16th, headed out of stanton bay, hopin to make it into hoare lake and come back up via fern, beg, and bud. hopefully that wind lets up a little gettin across pickeral!

Been a while since anyone’s updated this so I’ll pose a question or two. We are going to the BW the second week of September. A huge swing for us; we typically hit the end of May / beginning of June. Health reasons mandated the change. So now we are faced with an entirely different set of conditions which we are not familiar with. Any help would be appreciated. Walleye; smallies; pike; no real interest in  lakers.
About all I know is that water will be warmer and forage species will all be larger. Follows that we would need to use larger artificials (any favorites out there for this time of year?) or larger live bait. (allowed where we are going)
Beyond that; we doing all we can to be best prepared for the change of conditions. I’ve made my inept attempt at using the search feature but either came back with no hits or way too broad of a spectrum to be of any practical use.