a bit of fishing

So yeah I hadn't posted any fishing pictures in like a week and a half or two. I guess you fish too much when people start messaging you asking if you are all right. Then I got a few messages like hey I'm really catching fish, if you want you can come here and I can help you... The truth is with the fall bite delayed by all the warm weather at the beginning of the month the peak fishing hit right when bowhunting started. So every moment has been spent hunting or fishing or unloading hunting stuff and loading fishing stuff or vice versa and just trying to cram it all in. So here is a photo dump of fishing photos from the last seven or eight days. The fishing has just been outstanding with smallmouth murdering a big triple wing buzzbait at first then a Vic Coomer paddleswim as the water cooled off. I also wasted a few days chasing one fish, I hooked and lost twice off the same rock two days apart as big a smallmouth as I've ever seen around here so I hammered that spot for a few days with no luck. Except for the Ohio River the four other streams I fished are as low and clear as I've ever seen them this time of year. One of the highlights was a trip where the sun was hitting the water just right and I could sight fish smallmouth, stalking and casting to them and watching two fish fight over who was going to get to the lure first. Low point was ripping a six inch gash in my waders tonight on the wrong side of a 53 degree river I had to wade across up to my waist a mile from the car. Luckily I did have some hunting clothes in the car and I stripped naked in the parking lot. Again luckily no one pulled in right then. I found quite a few hybrids in the Ohio river from about a half pound up the ones you see in the photos. No giants but a lot of fun midday between hunting trips. Speaking of giants it's the first paddlefish I've seen posted this year so I'll answer the usual comments. It's a paddlefish or spoonbill catfish, whichever you want to call it. Yes they are endangered in Ohio and yes I released it. If you fish either below the dams or out in front of deeper creek mouths in the Ohio river in cold weather you have a good chance of snagging one while trying to catch hybrids or sauger. Once it gets a bit colder there will probably be quite a few posted on here. Every now and then someone even catches one below east fork or ceasars creek dam but the vast majority come from the Ohio. One cool thing about them is sometimes they will even jump two or three times which is what this one did besides trying to completely spool me. Tonight the river was 53 with cold weather forecasted for every day this week so the main peak of the best smallmouth fishing is probably passing though winter can be trophy time. All in all it's been a pretty swell couple weeks.