Grand River Largemouth 5-13-26

I haven't done as much bass fishing as I'd like this year. But I finally got a chance to get out for an afternoon. Bass fishing reports are going to be few and far between in here. You'll have to monitor the regular news section for tournament wrap up blogs. The nature of that game is much more secretive to post regular reports.

Mid May on the river should be comfortable, easy, and really predictable. A lot changes with 45 degree temps and 25mph NW winds though. I was going full explore mode and fishing places I'd never been to this time of year. My hope was to catch them shallow and also find a few current seams that I could catch them every cast.

I launched in Bruce's Bayou and just trolled over to the windy side with some productive looking pad stems. I knew that pattern was in trouble when I didn't catch one on the first 5 casts. Despite repeatedly trying to force that every so often, I only caught one fish out of pad stems in there. I did get a couple others elsewhere in the system on pad stems but nothing great. I gave the pad stems about 5 minutes and pulled out towards the weed edge. A few casts out there and a nice one but the jackhammer. I could catch fish out there on a jackhammer and a spinnerbaits but it wasn't fast enough pace for me. I would end up catching my biggest fish of the trip out there on a senko of all things.

It was off to test the current seam theory and work on setting up my Humminbirds after the recent update. The current seam bite was disappointing too. I could catch 2 or 3 off of most likely places. But they just weren't loaded up. I think they'd already pulled in deep for spawning and weren't coming back out. The ones that were in deep were kind of in a funk. Nothing was ideal but I was making it work. I was rotating through a red Lucky Craft squarebill, jig, and small creature bait. I would mix a ned rig in too but they were preferring the larger presentations. Fine with me, I would rather catch them on a heavy action TFO rod than a light action TFO spinning rod.

Squarebilling is one of my true loves in the spring if there are rocks in the system. So I was having fun with that. You never know what might snatch a squarebill banging around in the rocks and my surprise today was a big drum that took way to long to reel in.

It was a lot of fun exploring despite a bite that was more challenging than expected. But I will say I am sick of fishing in my cold weather gear and I was glad to not hit anything! A lot of presentations were in play and I caught fish in ned rigs, jigs, small creature baits, urchin style baits, senkos, chatterbaits, squarebills, swim jigs, and spinnerbaits. That place should go off during the next warming trend.