Friday I had Josh and Patrick on board for a guided bass trip on Black Lake. They had fished Black Lake several times before and had good success but were looking to learn more about the lake. We had gotten a late start but since it was a cool post-front morning I wasn't expecting the bite to be good yet. Lately the afternoons have been the best. Josh and Patrick are good anglers so we started with artificials and found the bite difficult. Of course the Senko produced the most bites but they were small fish, all largemouth. Later in the day we spent more time with the crayfish on the bottom. But that bite was also slow. I tend to like to see my customers catch smallmouth on light tackle but there are times when it can be slow. It seems there are just times the smallmouth are after the crayfish and you really catch them. And other times they're not. Josh did catch a solid 3 pound smallmouth on the crayfish but they only caught 3 smallmouth total on them. The senko produced 2 other smallmouth and the rest were all largemouth. They totaled around 20 bass and all were released. Good luck to all fishing the lake. Please practice catch and release.