Spending a perfect day fishing on crystal-clear Lake Geneva

LAKE GENEVA, Wis. - The morning started off with a blue sky, calm water and a gentle breeze.

By the time we got to bass No. 40, the whitecaps were moving along like a hard-driving Texas herd of cattle heading to a stock yard.

The inimitable Green Acres Mike, guide and friend Spence Petros were with me as we continued throwing drop-shot rigs to schooled bass in about 12-feet of crystal-clear water.

Petros works as a guide five days a week (815-455-7770), and he tackles Lake Delavan first when the gamefish season opens, going after some very rigorous, confrontational encounters with big crappies and bluegills.

Even at this long and storied life, Spencer continues to entertain fishing customers by putting them on fish time after time.

And this day was no different, except it was a "guys day out" on Lake Geneva, similar to the dozens of outings we've had in the past whenever there was an opening or change in his guide schedule.

All three of us like to target smallmouth bass, but this was a day that showed us more green bass (largemouth) than anything else.

Here's what I like most about Lake Geneva:

This large chunk of crystal-clear water continues to show its good size every successive season, and this year was no different.

As Petros has preached for decades, the real secret to finding and catching bass starts with tight boat control.

"Tight in the vernacular simply means staying on a track which follows structure and weedlines. One allows a slight wind to push the boat along while the electric motor pushes or pulls the boat back in line with the wind.

And structure could be anything from a line of cabbage weeds to cement fish cribs dropped to the bottom ages ago for boat mooring. Sometimes the largemouth bass would hold right on the outside edges of the cabbage while other times we would find the fish on the inside of the "jungle" against some thicker stalks of green stuff.

My tools included a handful of small Yum Dingers, a Grandt 6-foot-6 XLH-70, medium-action spinning rod with the reel spooled with 8-pound Berkley Nanofil. Another similar rod was rigged with a ¼-ounce tube jig and Nanofil. I was able to lull the fish into striking both setups. The hits felt like ultralight ticks instead of the typical bass smash and grab action.

Petros gauges the day's take on how many fish the boat catches relative to a specific time period. An average day's catch cannot be categorized as average. Some days his clients will nail more than 80 fish. A fair day, like what we had, was just over 50 largemouth. The biggest fish went 20-inches and 4-pounds.

Petros manages to solidly book his season in a prior winter. It's rare that he has openings, but just in case that there may be a glimmer of hope, check him out at spencepetros.com.

• Contact Mike Jackson at angler88@comcast.net, catch his radio show 7-9 a.m. Sundays on WGCO 1590-AM (live-streamed at www.1590WCGO.com) and get more content at www.mikejacksonoutdoors.com.