Friday, May 8, 2015

Change of venue...

Well it was two or three hours after daylight. I'd left the house before daylight and I didn't have much to show for it. the rapidly warming water temperatures mean that the big smallies we had been running into here for the last couple weeks had packed up and left town. I think I had caught two or three since daylight and they were all small. I had caught a shovelhead on a curly shad which was pretty cool but I still had all day to fish so time to get out of Dodge.
When I got to the next place and headed down over the bank a great blue heron and two green herons flushed from the river bank. Sure enough as I neared the water a sheet of minnows scattered jumping wildly. Not a big shiner type minnow but little bitty crappie minnow sized ones. Ever little bit as I rigged up you could see them scatter as fish attacked them from below. I was feeling pretty good about moving.  :)
I tied on a three inch silver flaked grub to try to somewhat match the bait. On about the third cast the drag screamed as a hybrid whacked the jig. For a couple hours the bite was pretty good I caught five or six hybrids, three or four small smallmouths and a couple largemouths. It was getting pretty hot time for a siesta. all down the streambank walking in you could see spawning carp rolling in the shallows. Time for a sacrifice. After cubing a small carp into one inch chunks I waded in waist deep below a twisty set of runs and began throwing the chunks of bait on a hook with a couple spiltshot above it up and letting it drift back down to me. About every ten minutes the drift would be interrupted by a channel cat. wading along nice and cool and hammering channels it doesn't get much better than that. And much more basic, that's pretty much the way grandpa caught them sixty years ago out of the river. Fun and no better way to learn how to read a river. Drifting bait in and out of eddies and runs teaches you whats going on under there.
Finally it began to edge over towards evening, back to the spot. Away goes the great blue heron again while the little green heron just flies up into a tree thirty yards away. Pretty soon he flitted down and carefully edged down the side of a big rock and began to put away minnows like he was bottomless. I don't know where he put them all. Every little bit minnows would scatter as bass, white bass and hybrids attacked them. It was a horror movie if your a little fish I guess. It was a five star one show to me though. Sure enough the action picked up right where it left of this morning. I guess I caught nine or ten more hybrids before dark with a mixed bag of small smallmouth, decent largemouth and some white bass thrown in. I got home 13 hours after I left, a very tired but very happy camper
 









 

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