Pre-Spawn Largemouths to 20 Inches on Lake Hopatcong

Thinking ahead to this outing more than a week ago, I planned on Matt and I targeting largemouths as well as hybrids. I imagined catching a five- or six-pound largemouth, because we might find ourselves in a situation fitting this possibility just right before they would spawn. I don't really know why it would be any more likely to catch a big one just before the spawn than a month before the spawn or a week after, except that big females usually weigh a little less after they drop their eggs, depending on what they've eaten. Nevertheless, having spent nearly 60 years outdoors since I was three years old, I have a sense for things going on out there, and transitions of any kind imply activity. Otherwise, nothing would be changing.

We got to Dow's at 5:30 a.m. Jimmy was loading his boat to go out and fish live herring. Joe came out and got a boat ready for us immediately. We were on the lake just after 5:45. As we crossed its main body, the sun broke over the horizon. It was windy.

On the initial trolling pass, I noticed a lot of fish on the graph, but when we turned around for the second pass, we hadn't got hit. Soon, I realized I was marking more fish than I ever have marked in our favorite trolling lanes, big icons on the graph; apparently these were hybrids weighing at least four pounds. On the eighth or ninth pass, I finally got hit. I had been changing plugs at each turn. Running a Storm Hot 'N Tot, a crankbait diving about eight feet, for a split second,I thought I might catch a hybrid on yet another kind of plug. A couple of seconds after I got smacked, Matt hooked up and the fish ran hard before the Rapala Finesse Sinking Minnow he used pulled free.

That's all the hybrid action we had today, besides a few other knocks on our plugs, perhaps. I told Matt that Mike Maxwell and I once began a long day at these lanes, catching nothing, and then came back five hours later and slayed a bunch of five-pounders. Matt and I would return later but then not only fail to hookup. We saw no fish on the graph at all, either.

Water temperature ranged from 57 in the morning to 62 in the afternoon. The day began as very chilly, especially with that wind I mentioned. Heavy. Numerous times during the day, I scooped water out of the boat. Whitecaps marked rolling waves.

The key to this day was the opposite to all this churning and chaos, as anyone might think of big female bass getting ready to bed. They don't want to lay eggs where moving water will disrupt them. I felt so eager to hook a big bass, I almost had us start fishing the way I'll explain in a moment, before we even gave a favorite shallow cove a try by trolling. In the past, it's been a fish on every pass here, but always when water temperature is at least 70. I did once catch a hybrid at the edge of the cove where it drops off, but most of the fish are crappies, pickerel, and largemouths.

As I expected, nothing happened. I felt much better when soon I had us go into a little cove completely protected by the wind. Shallow, about four feet deep. On my first cast, I hooked my first fish of the day on a Senko, a 20-inch largemouth I weighed at four-pounds, 10 ounces. A fish most might call a five-pounder. In that shallow water, it rolled about heavily on the hook like a pig. It's a fish I expected, and yet I felt shocked.

The big one boated and released, I knew this is where we would fish today--any quiet, little shallow coves we could find. They weren't readily available. Some spots looked great, except that they were impossible to fish because waves carried the boat against the power of my electric motor. But despite the handicap of that wind, we managed to catch five largemouths apiece, a crappie, and a big rock bass. We caught them all over the lake, searching out our special opportunity. My second-biggest largemouth was 17 1/4 inches. The others were about 15, 14, and 11. The crappie was 13 1/4 inches.

On the way home, I decided to pull over so we could fish a part of the lake publicly accessible by shore and protected from the wind. I let Matt have sway. From the boat, he had caught two largemouths. In yet another half hour of fishing, he caught three more, including his biggest of about two pounds.

Lake Hopatcong