a wild day...

Hit the Ohio River with my friend and stripey fish guru Rob. You would think I had a decent day catching a few nice saugfish and a couple small hybrids and a couple buffalo. As long as you didn't know what Rob did...
What Rob did was fish a swimbait under a launcher further out than I could see and catch big hybrids like I've never seen before. And three were in the 8 to 9 pound range! In raging current at the end of very very long long casts. I've only been really badly whipped twice in the the last few years and both times it was by Rob and with stripey fish. I'm going to have to spend some time doing some serious homework on these fish. It's starting to get personal with me and fish with stripes. I did hook something huge on a swimbait. It didn't act like a snared paddlefish or even a giant pure striper but instead just bent the rod all the way into the cork and just slowly moved wherever it wanted to for twenty minutes before pulling off. I'm guessing a really really big blue or shovel.
Afterward I hit the GMR for a bit and caught a few smallmouth and a 35 inch shovelhead. The shovel I landed in just a couple minutes on the same tackle that the beast pulled me around for twenty plus minutes with.  Sigh...makes you wonder

A good day...10/21

What a difference a day makes. The fish were biting pretty good but today's chilly weather flipped the feeding switch to on. I guess I caught somewhere around twenty to twenty five smallies and if catching a catfish on a lure is on your bucket list right now is the time. Four shovelhead and three channels in the last two day on a lure. Today what seemed to work best was the original classic curly shad, the pearl with a black back fished on a quarter ounce jighead in current.

rainy day surprise

Nothing like having a shovel nail your smallmouth grub that your fishing on light spinning tackle....

10/14

Yep that's the bike trail in the background, luckily the bike trail is something like 75+ miles long so I'm thinking my new little hotspot is safe for now. Caught eight in an hour topped off by this 18 incher. Lousy photo, didn't realize till I got home it's tail wasn't straight but was curved back towards me :(   All on a Vic Coomer paddletail on a 1/4 ounce jighead in pretty swift current glued pretty tight to some big rock.

10/13

As the water cools the river fishing is heating up. Caught about a dozen tonight in a smaller stream in SW Ohio on Vic's paddletail swimbait fished on a 1/4 ounce jighead.

Wow

Last night almost stepped on the biggest snake Ive ever seen outside of a zoo. That's the skinny part of the snake you can see out in the open, if you look off to the right side of the photo you can see part of the thicker part. A gigantic black rat snake that is much longer than I am tall, I'd guess somewhere between seven or eight feet. Needless to say even though I've been known to catch snakes I left this guy completely alone.