LAKE OF THE WOODS, Minn. – The 3½-pound smallmouth bass smacked a tube jig on his very first cast, and during one stretch on this picture-perfect September day, it looked as if Ben Barrus might just catch fish on every cast.

One after another, after another, after another it happened – fish on, fish on, fish on – 11 times, to be precise.

The streak ended at 11 – his old consecutive smallmouth record before moving to Lake of the Woods (more on that later) – but there’s no doubt Barrus and his two fishing partners were experiencing something special.

The smallmouths were snapping. They were fat, and they were sassy.

“They’re starting to get that puffy build to them,” Barrus said, a sign the bass are bulking up for the long winter ahead by gorging on crayfish and shiner minnows. Every smallmouth was an absolute chunk; “circle fish,” he calls them, because that’s how their round, chunky bodies are shaped.

And oh, the fight they put up. Fun, fun, fun.

A charter boat captain for Border View Lodge, Barrus, 27, of Roosevelt, Minn., spends most of his time guiding for walleyes, the preferred species for pretty much everyone who fishes the south shore of Lake of the Woods. The Minnesota side of the big lake is renowned for its walleyes, after all, not to mention saugers, sturgeon, pike and the occasional bonus perch.

Give Barrus a choice, though, and the Blissfield, Mich., native will take bass over walleyes every time. He grew up fishing bass, targeting smallmouths on offshore structure of Lake Erie and Lake St. Clair, two fisheries famous for their big smallmouths.

The Ontario side of Lake of the Woods also is known for smallmouths, but it turns out the offshore structure on the Minnesota side of the big lake offers some pretty darn good smallmouth bass fishing at times, too, for anglers who know where to look.

Little by little, Barrus is learning where to look.

“The schools that I chase are pelagic – they swim around, roam and they’ll pull up on a rock pile to feed,” said Barrus, who started exploring the massive expanse of Big Traverse Bay on Lake of the Woods for bass shortly after moving to the area in the fall of 2020.

Occasional rumblings

There were rumblings, Barrus said, of anglers catching the occasional smallmouth along the south shore of Lake of the Woods when he moved to the border country, but few people seriously fished for them.

“You kind of heard rumors here and there,” he said. “Looking at the rock piles and some of the structure out in the main basin here, it’s dang near identical to the stuff on Lake Erie. I fished bass a decent amount out there, so I just kind of putzed around that (offshore structure).”

Using side-scan technology to scope out likely spots, Barrus and another Michigan-native bass fishing fanatic, who also guides for Border View, discovered areas along the south shore that held impressive numbers of smallmouths.

“I was like, ‘All right, there’s some serious bass out here,’” Barrus recalled. “It’s so new (on the Minnesota side of the lake), there’s no information out there. The late summer and fall time especially – that’s prime time out here – just with the way the shiners move in.

“When (the bass) pull up to a rock pile to feed, there’ll be – there’s no telling how many – it’s 100 fish, 300 fish.”

He once caught smallmouths in Minnesota waters of Lake of the Woods for two straight hours – 73 fish on consecutive casts – a new record that will be tough to top.

“It’s insane – doesn’t make sense to me, let alone other people when I explain it to them,” Barrus said. “You find one of those schools, they might be there for half a day, or four or five days, but then they vanish and they’ll show up two or three miles down the lake. Every year, I’m getting more and more areas, and the average size of the fish is getting bigger, too.”

Planting the seeds

Barrus, who offers fall smallmouth trips in his 22-foot Ranger when he’s not running a charter boat, planted the seeds for this two-day excursion back in February, when three of us joined him for an evening of sturgeon fishing through the ice on Lake of the Woods. The trip yielded three sturgeon, the two biggest measuring 56½ inches and 55¼ inches, the latter caught by Joe Banish of Grand Forks, N.D.

Ben Barrus nets a smallmouth bass for Joe Banish of Grand Forks, N.D., on Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, on the south shore of Lake of the Woods. (Brad Dokken / Forum News Service)

Banish, 29, grew up fishing smallmouth bass in his home state of Michigan and jumped at the opportunity to try his luck on Lake of the Woods smallies.

The plan on Day One, Barrus said, was to hit some “sweet spots” and “run and gun” as needed. A 300-horse Mercury outboard powers his boat, so covering water wouldn’t take long.

“If the school’s here, you’ll know right away,” he said. “If it’s a slow bite, we’ll dial them in throughout the day and then tomorrow we’ll know exactly.”

No dialing in was needed; the bass were abundant, and the action was fast at both of the “sweet spots” Barrus tried on Day One.

Banish, who has caught his share of smallies over the years, said he’s never experienced bass fishing like he enjoyed over two days fishing with Barrus on Lake of the Woods.

At one point on the second day, he gave Barrus a run for his money by boating smallmouths on eight consecutive casts.

“I thought I knew smallmouth fishing growing up in Michigan, but I’ve learned today,” Banish said. “My dad and I would go to one of those lakes in the U.P. (Upper Peninsula of Michigan) and we’d catch 30 or 40 2-, 3-, 4-pounders and think that’s a great day. To get (the numbers we got over two days) is absurd.”

So good was the action, at times, that mere words don’t really do it justice. We left the water feeling giddy both days.

“I remember the first time I got on them halfway decent out on the lake,” Barrus said. “It was like, I couldn’t believe it because everybody says, ‘oh, there’s some,’ and then I run over this area with the side scan and I’m like, man, if those are (smallmouths) … you see them on the graph plain as day – a school of a couple hundred fish, it looked like. You don’t even want to believe it.

“Once you get on them, figure out what they’re eating, it’s cast after cast. Three or four hours later, you’re still catching them every cast.”

Tools of the trade

Barrus’ bass fishing arsenal includes tube jigs, swimbaits and grubs – “NetBait” soft plastics and “BaitFuel” attractants made by American Baitworks Co. of Ocean Springs, Miss. The company also markets a line of fishing rods, and Barrus runs Halo KS II Elite and Halo HFX rods in 7-foot medium-heavy and 7-foot, 4-inch medium sizes.

“Those rods are excellent,” he said. “They’re affordable and more than good enough for me, so that means they’re more than good enough for the customer.”

Barrus rigs the soft plastics on three-eighths-ounce leadhead jigs made by OW Dub’s Custom Jigs and Plastics of Tipton, Mich.

In two days targeting smallmouths, the three of us landed and released an estimated 175 bass – 100 the first day and 75 the second – on the south shore of Lake of the Woods. The number might have been even higher if Barrus hadn’t decided to explore some different water the second day.

We landed bass up to 4½ pounds, and fish in the 3- to 3½-pound range were common. Some put on impressive displays of aerial acrobatics, while others dug for the depths.

For anyone who likes fishing, there’s a lot to like about smallmouth bass.

“They’re the most advanced feeding fish in the lake, and they’re fun because you can catch them in a variety of ways,” Barrus said. “You’re not going to catch a walleye or a sturgeon on topwater.”

Barrus plans to offer smallmouth trips through early October when he’s not driving a charter boat. For more information on smallies or other Lake of the Woods fishing excursions, contact Barrus at 517-486-1911 or online at facebook.com/ben.barrus.