a little bit more 2019...

Lots of rain. The creeks coming up and with warmer water than the Ohio because of the rain. I could just picture this pulling the fish a bit tighter into the mouths of the streams dumping into the big river.  Sometimes it's just grinding it out in winter but sometimes it's timing. Today was timing. I started close to Cincy and drove out 52, heading east and targeting the mouths of five or six streams. At three I found fish. Nothing spectacular but at a rate you would call a fish every now and then, which is all you can really ask for in winter.  Water resistant hunting jacket over the waterproof hodgeman wading jacket, knee high rubber boots and still ending up covered in mud and soaking wet and smelling like a wet dog. All the fish came on a 3/8 ounce jighead and either a paddletail grub or a curly shad.

sneaking in a few last trips for the year

Well we got one day off from the hospital. She just wanted to nap so it was off to the river and out of her hair with me for the first time in weeks. I fished Vic's new lipless crankbait in a deep slow hole. Lifting it up off the bottom then letting it settle again on a tight line, repeatedly. On another rod I hair rigged two kernals of corn just trying to avoid a skunk since it's been so daggone cold and I've been out of touch with my smallies for so long. I ended up fishing 3 hours and caught a few fish on each method. One very small smb and one dandy on the crankbait, and two big common carp and one small but very beautiful mirror carp on the hair rig. Plus a small channel foul hooked. Saw an eagle perched in a riverside sycamore. Heard Sandhills calling somewhere downstream. A much needed break and a wonderful winter trip.

polar plunge

I headed back to the same spot as the day before hoping to recreate some of the same magic. Same lure, Vic's new lipless crankbait. At most five minutes in I let the lure fall on a tight line then lifted into a heavy weight. The rod just surged as the fish took line. At this point I'm sure I've snared a big carp or something. But there is none of the feeling of tail hitting line or panic you get from a snared carp, just weight, lots of weight. Strong runs with the rod bent into the cork. Then finally some minutes later a big black tail and mottled body roll on the surface. It's a shovel. And a really big one. More dogged runs and finally the fish is seemingly spent.
The hole actually has a very gradual slope on the bank I'm on and just inches deep way out. I've got rubber boots on so I wade out to grab the big cat rather than try to drag it over the shallows and have it bust off. I wade out and grab the big lower lip without too much trouble. D#@N it's big. Thirty five pounds? Forty? Easily the third or fourth biggest fish of the year behind some giant spoonbills snared saugeye fishing below dams on the Ohio. And definitely the biggest fish out of a smaller river. I raise the big cat and walk back towards the bank. A feet from the bank the fish thrashes and wrenches free. The lipless crank comes flying back and smacks me in the forehead sticking there. I'm unhooking the lure and cussing when I look down and the big fish is lying at my feet in seven inches of water exhausted. I dive on top of it. I'm literally sitting on top of the fish a leg on each side, my hands pinning it against the bottom. Well, $#%^ now what? I slide my hand forward trying to grab the fish again in the mouth. What I end up with a grip on it's upper jaw, not the lower one. I'm trying to get a grip on it's lower  jaw as the fish slowly comes to life. Squirming and trying to swim into deeper water. The fish is slowly making headway as I'm frantically trying to keep it pinned but it slowly comes loose. In slow motion like in a movie the fish just slides thru my hands till I'm trying to hold it just in front of the tail with both hands. Sigh, I'm on hands and knees in a foot of forty degree water soaked to skin with a forty three degree air temperature. And yes I'd had it in hand but as the old saying goes... Pics or it didn't happen. That's twice this year I've been bit with the dropsies, I dropped the best striper of the year a few months earlier in Tennessee while trying to set up the camera for a photo and watched it slide ten feet back down the bank into the river.
Back at the car sitting on the trunk pouring water out of my boots I remember thinking is it spring yet????