finally caught the elusive 17" or larger Small Mouth Bass

I've had such luck catching good size Large Mouth this year that it was no problem to get my Ontario Angler Award for them...but I was starting to get worried that the 17" or larger Small Mouth Award would be my undoing. The largest Small mouth I'd managed to pull in up till this past week was 15"...(lots of them..but they weren't 17"..lol). After the fantastic time we had at crotch lake in North Frontenac on Wednesday the 12th....I decided to book one of the other sites for Friday the 17th and head up with the boys again and try to catch something to get me another award (walleye, pike, Muskie, Carp, whitefish...ect...caught some..but not big enough to qualify thus far).
We got to the site around 9am...and settled in and fishing we went. It was super quite and empty at the sites..we had free range of all 3 road access campsites...which was just fantastic. We fished and caught lots of large (creepy...I think everyone knows how I feel about this odd fish and their funny noises) whitefish and average small mouth most of the morning..and then decided to trek down the river away to campsite 3 for the afternoon (the boys wanted to use the smooth rapids as a waterside and anything that makes them happy make me happy:). As it sometimes goes...I stood in the middle of the river at the bottom of the rapids on a huge boulder fishing away with various lures for over 90 minutes catching some good size rock bass but nothing award worthy or BIG like I wanted. I Finally decided to try a worm and bobber on a side inlet and of course on the first cast..BOOM...a beautiful large sized Small Mouth grabbed on...after he put up a fight for 5 t0 10 minutes and I finally got him in ....he measured 17.9" and I was one very happy (ok ecstatic) gal...Finally...another fish off my list :) Next cast got something on the line even bigger..unfortunately the fight broke my line and he took my beautiful new bobber...you win some you lose some!!

As we packed up and left we decided to fish for 30 minutes at the first campsite (which was empty) at the top deeper part of the lake. Took only a few minutes to get a small pike on my line with my Black Furry Lure, which unfortunately got snagged and lost on my next cast. Managed to land another pike about 10 minutes later...as I pulled him in we saw what we can only assume was a Muskie jump out in the lake about 2 meters from my last cast (this thing was bigger then me..it was incredible). Made for another amazing day at Crotch lake! Decided that we'll go back this Wednesday for our last before school fishing and nature day! Yippie!