Goodbye Summertime

Sigh... the end of August. Neverending summer no longer. Instead each summer's evening now is one day closer to it's end. Yes, I know fall is the best of our year here in Ohio. It's usually dry, comfortable, fish are biting, deer hunting is starting. Yeah, yeah, it's not summer. It's not wading wet on a hot day. It's not lying beside a campfire on a rock bar watching fireflies blink on and off on the other side of the river. In summer I've been known to find some shade on the riverbank and take a midday nap. Try doing that on a January fishing trip. Don't get me wrong I fish hard all year round. But the rest of the year it's a sport, something I do. In summer it's something I live. So here we are one day left in August. One day left of glorious summer. And it's the perfect summer day, not too hot, but still hot enough that the most dependable pattern of the year still holds. Summertime is the easiest time of the year to find smallmouth. I know if the weather has been steady and the river steady I can catch a nice smallmouth in summer. Like today. The river rushes and then a small piece of it turns in on itself. You have a small kitchen table sized bowl of waist deep water with fast shallow water pouring into it from upstream and from the side in a foot tall waterfall. Find that in any quality smallmouth stream in Ohio in a spot that isn't beat to death and in summertime there is going to be a Fish Ohio smallmouth lying in there. Or like today maybe a fish almost two inches past Fish Ohio standards. I'm going to miss you summer. I miss you already and you are not even gone....