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Will be on Potato the last week in August for the first time. Would love to get the kids onto some smallies (c&r only). Any advice for how to catch them? I traditional go after largemouth with spinnerbaits or throwing worms. Do I stick with these traditional methods or do I need to do something different for smallies? I appreciate the feedback and help. This is our summer vacation trip and I always that fishing is more fun when you are catching fish!

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My son caught this 28 " walleye on tater tonight. 30 Feet of water with a crawler. Sorry the pic is so big, not sure how to resize it. fishing2007004.jpg

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Andrewsdad-

There is some excellent smallmouth fishing out there, you'll have a blast. When you talk about throwing worms, I'm assuming you're talking artificial. JIgworms work ok for smallmouth out there, but there are a few better alternatives. Try wacky rigging a senko (unweighted) in some shade of brown and letting it soak for a long time. Don't give it much movement at all, less is more, be patient. Also try a suspending jerk bait or a Hornet over the weeds. Many of the smallmouth are schooling right now and as you battle one fish to the side of the boat, several others may follow it up. Thats a good time to drop a senko or tube and let it sink to the bottom right beside the boat. You'll often pick up one of the followers. Weeds are good out there for smallmouth, but rock and sand along fast tapering drops will be even better. Simply put, start on any of the humps. Let us know how it goes-

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Thanks for the great information and great picture. I can't wait to get up there and do some fishing! I'll be sure to let you know how things go.

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Tater was hot tonight. 5 walleyes and 2 smallies in about an hour and a half. 20 to 30 ft of water. My son was using crawlers and I was using redtails. We both caught fish. Lots of fun.

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Good to hear the night bite was good. We were out there in the morning and it was awesome. We had 7 walleye and 22 bass. WE got everything in 17-22ft on crawlers. Half the bass were under 12 inches, the other half were 3 lbs or better, nothing in between. Glad to hear they're going in the evening though too, I have a guide trip out there tomorrow evening as well. Leechman, if you happen to be out there tomorrow night, stop and say hi.

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Hey Jason, wondering how things went on potatoe yesterday. Ryan and I started prefishing Long yesterday getting ready for the Fall Classic. We were strictly after Northerns yesterday. We caught a couple of qualifiers, but no quality fish. We seem to have some good spots for some of the bigger bass. The walleyes are kind of hit and miss out there, depending on the day.

Got to run, good luck

Leechmann

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Potato last night was pretty good. My clients wanted to catch a little of everything and we did. We had 4 very nice pike, 13 bass with the largest at 18" and 1 walleye about 5 lbs. Lots of riff-raff mixed in of course. The night before I had a guide trip on Long and that was marginal. Lots of small bass (like always), had a nice pike that went about 6 lbs and one walleye. The baitfish weren't bunched and there actually weren't that many bluegill, perch and rockbass bugging us, which is both good and bad. Many times their presence and activity level prompt larger fish to compete and hit reactively which is good. But when the smaller fish are overly active you go through 20 dozen crawlers per trip, which is bad!

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Jason - do you have a website? I kicked off this thread by saying I would be up there for maybe a week at the end of August. I am thinking I might want to have someone show me the ropes around Potato. I'm not a rookie by any means but have never fished the area and could use some guidance. It would be my wife and two kids. Send me a note at [email protected]

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Sent you an email this morning. I do have a website that will be up within the next month.

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