Weather: Sunny. A nice chop inside the retaining wall, and some 2-4 foot swells on the lake.

Methodology: We fished with a friend on his 18 foot Ranger bass boat, throwing tubes, worms and crank baits. By the end of the day, we were throwing anything from the box.

King of the Boat: John.

John’s Thoughts on the Day: Interestingly Indiana literally means “land of Indians”, and oddly enough we saw the same number of fish as we did Indians, if you count the folks standing near the casino we passed on our gut wrenching boat ride, but more on that in a moment.

We were fishing with a world class guide, renowned for his fishing exploits, from an awesome bass boat loaded to the gunnels with secret tournament wining baits. Confidence was extremely high the night before, but then we awoke to find the wind blowing. When I say wind blowing, I do not mean a light zephyr that would keep the flies at bay and cool us as we labored at bent fishing rods….I mean flag ripping, hold onto your hat wind ! As we drove across Chicago to the launching point across the state line, wind buffeting Mikes jeep (which was almost as distracting as the dash instruments intermittent functioning) we tried to talk ourselves into thinking it would “lay down” and not interrupt our smallmouth quest.

Arriving at the ramp, we strode over the berm to see 4 and 5 foot breaking waves as far as the eye could see. Our guide was gung ho and ready to go, I figured he is a seasoned great lake guy and must know more than we did, so we loaded up and headed out. As soon as we cleared the breakwater Gordon Lightfoot’s “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was playing in my head and would be on a loop all day. We pounded across the bay, taking water and spray at a volume I was sure the bilge pumps could not handle, soon we had to accelerate between waves and coast down the back sides, hard going, but we were dedicated. After 20 minutes we arrived at the first spot, a warm water discharge into the lake. I was amazed the trolling motor was holding the boat in position, sort of anyway, until the 6 foot waved crested BEHIND us, we apparently were going to surf that wave. I can honestly say it was the first time in my life I had been on a bass boat, about one and half casts off the beach when a 6 foot waves broke behind us, with more coming, hopefully it will be the only time. In short order a few smallies were caught and we prospected for every little bit of lee we could find, but no more fish were caught.

We spent several hours pounding about, our big achievement was that nobody was thrown from the boat by the waves. The wind did abate somewhat later in the day and the fishing became safer, but none were caught. We floated through some exceptional looking areas that should have been loaded with fish, but apparently the weather and time of year had then all hanging out offshore…….and we were certainly not going out there after them. Kudos to our dedicated guide, I would head out with him in an instant, if the wind was not blowing. It was not pretty, but we scratched “Land of Indians” off our list, and we knew they would not all be pretty, and hopefully not windy either.

Mike’s Thoughts on the Day: Well, as it turns out, there are superstitions associated with fishing. I do not have any of my own, but supposedly, it is bad luck to take bananas on a boat, and it is bad luck to catch a fish on the first cast. It seems that there are tournament fisherman that will intentionally make a bad cast so that they won't hook one on the first attempt.

I mention this because that is what happened on this trip. Our "guide" Ross loaded us up, took us about 15 minutes from the put in, and positioned us right in front of a water discharge station. It was a spot right out of the fishing manual. First cast, Ross hooks a nice 2 pound smallie. One or two casts later, John lands one about the same size. Of course we have no pictures of these fish. I mean, who takes a picture of the first fish?? There would be plenty more over the course of the next 6 hours. Right??

Well. Not so much. As you can see from the few photos we did take, we were in all of the right spots. It was classic smallmouth structure. The problem was there was nobody home. As we drifted over spots, the water was clear enough to see 5-6 feet deep, and there was nothing. We have caught more than our share of fish in these same structures in Oklahoma, Illinois and on the rivers in other states. Today - nothing. A big freakin' goose egg for me. John kept us from being shut out altogether with his one fish. Other than almost being thrown from the boat by a sudden 6 foot swell, the day was not all that exciting.

All in all, I would have to say it was a test of the "Bad Day Fishing" theory. Despite the lack of piscatorial participation, I would have to say it was better than a good day of work. Hopefully, this is a theory we won't have to test again for a while.