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My in-laws own a cottage on a northern Wisconsin lake near Manitowish Waters. The lake is “gin-clear” as they say, deep, and full of big smallmouth bass - or so the local bait shop owner kept telling me. I had fished the lake with marginal success for a decade, regularly catching smaller fish. All that changed a few years ago when I made a startling discovery on a bright, sunshiny day without a lick of wind.

I was in a jon boat, slowly rowing away from the shoreline and peering over the gunwale while viewing sunfish that occupied the shallower water. At twenty-two feet of depth - just at the point where the lake’s bottom was becoming tough to see - I saw them. Or I thought I saw them.

I remember resting my chin on an oar and staring straight down into the water, being careful not to cause any movement that could ripple the surface and distort my vision. Doing this, I was able to see them: large shadowed forms moving slowly along the bottom, some of them looking remarkably like over-inflated footballs with fins. I thought, “Yikes, those can’t be…yes they are. They’re huge smallies!”

Everybody else who I’d seen fish this lake fished for bass the same way - including me - until I made my discovery. We’d throw spinnerbaits or deep-diving crankbaits towards shore during the morning or evening hours, stealthily using the low light in hopes of catching larger fish that might be cruising the shallows.

In the past, I’ve done pretty well live-bait rigging for walleye, so naturally I began to toy with the idea of deep-drifting leeches and fathead minnows along the bottom behind a slip-sinker, smack-dab in the faces of these big bass. Looking at these fish surely wasn’t going to put any in the boat, so I got to shore, grabbed a couple of Styrofoam buckets and pushed the speed limit all the way to the bait shop. I ordered a half-pound of leeches and two dozen minnows when the shop owner asked, “Gonna give the walleyes a shot?” Being an experienced angler and fairly adept in the art of bald-faced lying, I replied with a poker face, “Yep.”

Well, I’m not usually the guy who thinks too far outside the box when it comes to fishing, but I guess I sort of unlocked one of the lake’s secrets on that particular day. It turned out that applying a tried and true walleye tactic for these deep-water bass was nothing short of incredible. While others continued to ply the shallows before and after the sun was high in the sky, I began to wait until late-morning to drag large minnows and leeches along the bottom in the sunshine, usually in water 24 to 32-feet deep.

To this day, this tactic never, ever fails to entice and fool these bruisers. I’ve had unseen behemoth's snap 6-pound test line like it was sewing thread. Last summer, my son, Anders, had a smallmouth hooked and nearly to the boat that, after I briefly caught a glimpse of the fish, made my knees shake. And my wife’s uncle, earlier this season, witnessed a smallie he figured was all of 24-inches jump skyward and cleanly break his 8-pound. mono at the barrel swivel.

We just got back from the cottage on Sunday and I’m happy to report that the bass aren’t “on to us” yet. We fished during a severe cold front with a sharp, north wind that didn’t push the mercury much above 50-degrees for three straight days. Even when the fishing wasn’t supposed to be worth a tinker, we mercilessly pounded the bajeezus out of the big smallies. They’re still powerless over the seductive ways of the live-bait rig.



Dan Brown is a director at the Chisago Lakes Achievement Center in Chisago City. In addition, Brown is a fly casting instructor and trout fishing guide at Seven Pines Lodge in Lewis, WI. Recently Brown was featured on Ron Schara’s Minnesota Bound and ESPN II’s Backroads with Ron and Raven, as well as KSTP channel 5’s Eyewitness News Morning Show. He is a Taylors Falls resident and can often be found on the area lakes, trout streams and the St. Croix river.

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