NCangler

Originally Posted by turtlestew

Toba and I headed west to the mountains this weekend to try and catch some smallies. We wanted to do some river fishing but with the recent rains figured it was best to stay on a lake, so we decided on Lake James. I arrived at Bob's house around 5:30 Saturday morning in Pittsboro and we were on the water by 9am after a few stops.

We fished all day Saturday and a half day Sunday. Saturday was painfully slow but scenery was great. Bob caught 2 smallies and a largemouth and I had 1 smallie and a 14" white bass. Bob's best smallmouth was 12" caught trolling within about 50 yards of the ramp as we were about to take out. My smallie was a hefty 7.5" but it was my first smallmouth from the kayak and was also caught near the end of the day so I was happy to avoid skunking on the target fish.

This morning, we launched around 6am and I hit a chunky little largemouth on a pop-r on about my 3rd or 4th cast. Then missed a smallmouth a few minutes later also on top. I didn't get any action for quite a while after that. Bob got the first nice fish of the trip finally with a 14.5" smallie on a carolina rig. A few hours later around 11 or so, he got the 2nd nice fish, a 16" smallie trolling a crankbait. We wanted to get off the water around 1 so we started heading back towards the ramp about 12:30. When we were a few hundred yards from the ramp, one of the rods as I was trolling went off and ended up being a nice 17.25" smallie. So overall a pretty slow trip given the number of hours on the water, but a few nice fish made the trip well worth it. Would definitely like to head back up there in the spring or fall when the water is a bit cooler. When I got home, my brother was putting striper on the grill he caught at Kerr Lake today to complete the weekend