4 lb 13 oz Lunker of the Year
3 lb 6 oz Lady Lunker of the Year
Bassmaster Elite Series - Showdown at the St. Lawrence River
Suitable for framing
Last pic of 2013 - October 27th
Another season is in the books! Welcome to our year end summary for the Black Lake Lunker Hunters. The short story is the bass fishing was horrible this year. The long story is we had a great time at Black Lake again. We love this place!
The season started full of anticipation and excitement as usual. We opened the cottage on May 25th. I prefer to open a little earlier, but such if life. The fishing began uneventful on Saturday, June 15th at 5:45 am. The water level was really high. We caught 11 bass after six hard hours of fishing. Not a good sign. The slow bite continued through the rest of the month. We only hauled in 84 bass in our 11 fishing days for the month. Average catch per day was 7.6 bass. You can imagine my disappointment. Denise had the biggest bass of the month at 3 lbs. 6 oz.
The bite picked up a tad in July, but was still way below our average take. July typically pulls in big numbers of bass for us. But we only caught 155 bass for 17 days of fishing. That's an average of 9.1 bass per day. Not great my any means. We had 7 bass over 3 pounds. The best being 3 lbs 7 oz. By this time we were highly disappointed in our catch for June and July. I guess the bass bite runs in cycles and this was beginning to look like an off year.
The month of August turned out to be decent with our fish count going up and the bass getting bigger. For the month of August we brought in 174 bass for 13 fishing days. That's an average of 13.4 bass per day. The best bass was a nice 4 lb 13 oz Lunker. It's our best bass in 5 years. Only 3 ticks short of the 5 pound club. This month we caught nine bass over 3 pounds, with 4 of them being over 4 pounds. The other 4's were, 4 lb 7 oz, 4 lb 10oz and 4 lb 11 oz. I should point out that the lake water level returned to a more normal state. One highlight for this month was going to see the Bassmaster Elite Series pros at the St. Lawrence River in Waddington. What a great time we had.
During September we caught 72 bass during 9 fishing days. Not good at all! That's an average of 8 bass per day. We only brought in two Lunkers this month. A 3 lb 9 oz and a nice 4 lb 5 oz. We participated in the annual Dash for Cash bass fishing tournament on September 15th. We did horrible! We caught 10 bass for the day, with our 3 best only weighing 7.1 lbs. Due to our low weigh, high winds and very rough water, we decided not to ride to the weigh-in. Turned out to be a good call because we needed at least 9.19 lbs to qualify in the money. Wait till next year though! ha ha ha.
There was no fishing in October as we pulled the boat out on the 5th. As I sit here and add up our fish count numbers for the year, I'm in shock! We only managed to catch 485 bass this year. That's 185 fewer bass than last year. And 274 fewer bass compared to two years ago. That is really unbelievable. We had 21 bass over 3 pounds. That's 10 less than last year. We had 5 bass over 4 pounds. That's 6 less than last year.
Now I'm sure other fisherman did better than us, but I'm convinced that the bass bite this year was off and our worst since coming to the lake in 2006. Some year had to be bad, so I guess this was it. I'm pretty sure next year will be better. I hope we get back in the 600+ to 700 + for the year. Time will tell!
Thanks for checking into my reports this year. I hope to bring more fishing reports in 2014. Live long and prosper! Until next time folks... Fish On!
