Fishing a creek about 3/4 of a mile up from where it runs into one of the rivers that feed the Ohio River here in Southern Ohio. The first fish hit in really heavy current and the rod just bent double and she bulldogged it for a while. I was certain she was a good channel or shovelhead right up until she suddenly went airborne just about giving me a heart attack. I was sure she was going to get off as I could do little with her in the heavy current and couldn't follow but after a few heart in my throat moments I managed to land it.
The other fish was in a bathtub sized hole right in the tail of a riffle and hit like a freight train and jumped three or four times, once end over end. I measured on at a bit under 19.5 and the other at a bit over 20 conservatively and as fat as any Ohio stream fish I've ever seen. If anything the pictures don't do justice to the guts on these fat girls. I'd say it's the second heaviest Ohio smallie I've ever caught in 40 years of doing this pretty hard. Yeah the tapes not pulled tight in the pic but you can see she's hanging over the 20 mark on each end with her mouth open and without the tail pinched. She was flopping a bit and that was as good a pic as I was willing to take and still get her back in the water as fast as possible. I also caught three smallies in the 14 to 15 inch range. Everything on a clear with gold glitter grub in pretty stained water. What a trip. Life was never better for an old river rat.
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