crossroads...

I really do not want this year to end,  I started things off by lucking into a big musky in a little creek, then caught a pb saugeye only to top it with the saugeye of a lifetime, then two 20" smbs in SW Ohio, then off to the Boundary Waters to catch a pb smallie and the pike of a lifetime. I'm beginning to feel like some night in my dreams I must have made some Robert Johnson type deal with the devil for my soul this year. It seems like nearly every time I go out this year I'm involved with some sort of nice fish. Tonight was one of the wildest of the whole year tho! We had tons of rain and though the river didn't blow out it got muddy. Very muddy. I tied on one of Vic's big chunky 5" grubs to give the fish a bigger target and never took it off. Right away I hooked a big channel. A dandy in the 7 or 8 lb range and had it flopping around in two inches of water at my feet when it came off. Then two more smaller channels and then a real hard fighting shovelhead.  Then a big thump and the rod bent double. Okay another big channel or a nice shovelhead. Nope up in the muddy water rolled a huge smallmouth. And I mean huge. If no one gives me credit for anything else in life they still have to admit I've caught enough big smallies to know a good one. And this one was better than good. Easily one of the best two or three smallies I've ever had on in forty years of fishing SW Ohio rivers. Maybe the best, like I said it was huge. And I had it on forever and finally it was whipped and I was leading it into a tiny little slackwater area at my feet to land it and the hook just popped out. Six inches from my hand. Sigh...
Ten minutes later a big smallie hammered the grub and went airborne and tailwalked all over the river but never came off. It was a big stud of a fish and measured over 19.5 but felt more like a consolation prize. The other fish was clearly a size larger.
Sigh...