I made a return trip to Banks Lake. I had a pretty easy time getting limits for myself and my fishing buddy Tom Verschuren last time, and I fully expected to repeat the experience. I had invited Kim Kozelisky and Dave Birmingham to come along, for what I expected to be a great time on Banks. My plan was to limit on walleye early and then take them fishing for smallmouth to end the day. Like so many fishing trips, things don’t go as planned. I almost cancelled when I saw the forecast for very high winds. When we arrived there wasn’t much wind at all so I beat it to Barker Flats and put out the bottom bouncers. Kim put two fish in the boat fairly quickly but I got off the fish and had a tough time finding more. When I did, the wind hit. We struggled for a while and I headed for one of the canyons to get out of the wind and get some smallmouth. For the first time I can recall we couldn’t get a smallmouth. Apparently the storm the night before drove the fish away from the spots that have always produced lots of smallmouth for me in the past. Oh well. We had a great time anyway and will try Banks again later.