The story actually starts yesterday. Starting to feel a little stale from non stop smallmouth fishing this summer I'd decided to take a couple weeks and chase stripey fish. Or maybe I just hadn't gotten them completely out of my system from a couple recent trips to Tennessee. But anyhow here I was thirty miles south of my normal smallie waters chasing stripes. I caught a smallish one maybe three pounds and it was getting late around thirty minutes to dark I'd guess. I tied on a zara spook and made a few cast with it. I was standing just above a short but fast riffle and firing casts downstream. Against the current like this you could walk the spook almost in place retrieving it slowly but with lots of action. Blam, a fish knocks the spook a foot in the air end over end and then clobbers it right when it hits the water. Zing the drag just pours out line. Okay plenty of room to play it, no use to pull the hook so I let it run knowing it's a big fish. It runs then takes a sharp right turn and begins running back towards me. Right past the only rock in a hundred yards of wide open river it could get hung up on. I've got the rod held high overhead trying to clear the rock. No go. I wade right in, blowing out the spot but this is a fish big enough you would do that for. Ping! brand new 20 lb braid popped. strong language was used....
Today. Okay you really don't have time to fish, you would only have an hour at most. And not at dark which is primo stripey time. Yeah but rain rain rain, what if it blows out??? So there I was. It was early, too early for the spook I thought so I put on something new I've been playing with. Back in the winter at one of the fishing shows I bought a couple Evilution spinnerbaits. These guys have like a mini alabama rig sprouting out of the spinnerbait wire with four willowleaf blades. I know down in Tennessee Alabama rigs are all the rage for purebred stripers, I didn't see why a little castable version wouldn't work on our hybrids. I took the skirt off and replaced it with a paddletail swimbait Vic had given me for even more of an Alabama rig look. It actually worked in current really well. Willowleaf spinnerbaits usually do but it turns out so do four willowleafs. Same riffle as last night. Blam, and what rockets skyward but a big smallmouth!! Lovely fish it jumped three times, one a cartwheel end over end. Not a fat fish but really really long. Then ten minutes later not really a strike, one second I'm reeling it in and the next line is screaming out, a dandy hybrid this time. What a fantastic little short trip! I feel pretty lucky tonight.
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