It's obvious to me the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was a river fisherman. After all it was he who coined the famous phrase you can never step into the same river twice. Heraclitus also suggests god, like an oracle, neither declares or hides, but sets forth in signs. Again obviously alluding to the fish gods we are always making reference to. With no hard and fast rules the best we can hope for is to scry the signs and cast our puny offerings to the river.
Lately in my little part of SW Ohio the signs have pointed away from Micropterus dolomieu the Warrior and towards M. chrysops X M. saxtallis, the Hybrid, the Wanderer. My beloved smallmouth have spawned and the big girls for the most part are feeling a bit shy. Sure you still see posts evey couple days of someone landing a big smallmouth. It is fishing after all with no hard and fast rules. But for me and my style of fishing right now is just about the hardest time of the year to go out and intentionally catch a big smallmouth bass. So I take a mini vacation of sorts and chase that other vicious killer that stalks our rivers, the bass with the white stripes.
The problem here is that hybrids are great nomads. The tail that was filled to the rim with bass busting bait this morning might not have a hybrid within a half mile of it this afternoon. Instead we make educated guesses, postulate wild ass scientific theories and scry the signs.
Which is what led me to here. A rock bar, really a sand and gravel bar with a swift current flowing crosswise across its front and sweeping over the end before curling up behind in a big slow eddy. It's just breaking daylight, the coming day a long low tang colored band on the opposite bank. What's led me here is a dazzling profusion of small baitfish, not the bigger shad normally scouted out when looking for stripes but small minnows. But here in huge numbers and something else is here. Seemingly always out of the corner of my eye, out on the margin of wherever I happen to be looking at the moment, something is chasing the minnows. A spray of silver minnows scatters in a wave as fish strike at them from below. For a frantic few moments I try to see and cast to the busts but soon realize its futility and instead concentrate on making good presentations to the seam where fast water pouring over the bar meets slow. My lure of choice is a small curly shad, a
swimbait that's clear with silver glitter to try and capture somewhat the essence, the quiddity of a small minnow. Just as I begin to doubt myself the drag comes to life and the rod bends under the strain of a fishes run.
Like all battles with stripes of any sort the fish at first fools me into thinking it is bigger than it really is. I finally land it in a
shallow spot on the back of the bar and as I work the jighead free out of the corner of my eye I catch the sight of minnows skipping wildly running for lives from the predators below. Today at least, the fish gods are smiling...
