Rainy day fun...

A nice warm rain. Hopefully it won't blow the rivers out too bad, but this warmer weather does have the fish a bit more active. But still in their wintertime haunts, at least the better fish I've been catching lately. I guess I've sounded a bit like a broken record. The upper end of a wintering hole right next to current over a hard bottom. I probably have some version of that sentence in the last half dozen smallie reports. Hopefully in a week or so that won't be the case any longer. As soon as they leave their wintering holes early-season smallies will be looking for two things, slower current and warmer water. So leave the riffles, runs and midriver pool locations alone, instead look for smallies at creek mouths which put warmer water in the river, below dams, in side channels and in eddies below islands. But like I said that's still a few days away, right now I'm still using the same tactics I have all winter, a light jighead and a curly swim fished slow, tonight I was using six pound test because of water clarity but with the rain if the rivers still fishable I'll probably be using eight next time. Any heavier than that makes throwing a light jighead too hard. Tonight's best fish was a pretty 18 that pulled like mule.