a little bit more 2019...

Lots of rain. The creeks coming up and with warmer water than the Ohio because of the rain. I could just picture this pulling the fish a bit tighter into the mouths of the streams dumping into the big river.  Sometimes it's just grinding it out in winter but sometimes it's timing. Today was timing. I started close to Cincy and drove out 52, heading east and targeting the mouths of five or six streams. At three I found fish. Nothing spectacular but at a rate you would call a fish every now and then, which is all you can really ask for in winter.  Water resistant hunting jacket over the waterproof hodgeman wading jacket, knee high rubber boots and still ending up covered in mud and soaking wet and smelling like a wet dog. All the fish came on a 3/8 ounce jighead and either a paddletail grub or a curly shad.

sneaking in a few last trips for the year

Well we got one day off from the hospital. She just wanted to nap so it was off to the river and out of her hair with me for the first time in weeks. I fished Vic's new lipless crankbait in a deep slow hole. Lifting it up off the bottom then letting it settle again on a tight line, repeatedly. On another rod I hair rigged two kernals of corn just trying to avoid a skunk since it's been so daggone cold and I've been out of touch with my smallies for so long. I ended up fishing 3 hours and caught a few fish on each method. One very small smb and one dandy on the crankbait, and two big common carp and one small but very beautiful mirror carp on the hair rig. Plus a small channel foul hooked. Saw an eagle perched in a riverside sycamore. Heard Sandhills calling somewhere downstream. A much needed break and a wonderful winter trip.

polar plunge

I headed back to the same spot as the day before hoping to recreate some of the same magic. Same lure, Vic's new lipless crankbait. At most five minutes in I let the lure fall on a tight line then lifted into a heavy weight. The rod just surged as the fish took line. At this point I'm sure I've snared a big carp or something. But there is none of the feeling of tail hitting line or panic you get from a snared carp, just weight, lots of weight. Strong runs with the rod bent into the cork. Then finally some minutes later a big black tail and mottled body roll on the surface. It's a shovel. And a really big one. More dogged runs and finally the fish is seemingly spent.
The hole actually has a very gradual slope on the bank I'm on and just inches deep way out. I've got rubber boots on so I wade out to grab the big cat rather than try to drag it over the shallows and have it bust off. I wade out and grab the big lower lip without too much trouble. D#@N it's big. Thirty five pounds? Forty? Easily the third or fourth biggest fish of the year behind some giant spoonbills snared saugeye fishing below dams on the Ohio. And definitely the biggest fish out of a smaller river. I raise the big cat and walk back towards the bank. A feet from the bank the fish thrashes and wrenches free. The lipless crank comes flying back and smacks me in the forehead sticking there. I'm unhooking the lure and cussing when I look down and the big fish is lying at my feet in seven inches of water exhausted. I dive on top of it. I'm literally sitting on top of the fish a leg on each side, my hands pinning it against the bottom. Well, $#%^ now what? I slide my hand forward trying to grab the fish again in the mouth. What I end up with a grip on it's upper jaw, not the lower one. I'm trying to get a grip on it's lower  jaw as the fish slowly comes to life. Squirming and trying to swim into deeper water. The fish is slowly making headway as I'm frantically trying to keep it pinned but it slowly comes loose. In slow motion like in a movie the fish just slides thru my hands till I'm trying to hold it just in front of the tail with both hands. Sigh, I'm on hands and knees in a foot of forty degree water soaked to skin with a forty three degree air temperature. And yes I'd had it in hand but as the old saying goes... Pics or it didn't happen. That's twice this year I've been bit with the dropsies, I dropped the best striper of the year a few months earlier in Tennessee while trying to set up the camera for a photo and watched it slide ten feet back down the bank into the river.
Back at the car sitting on the trunk pouring water out of my boots I remember thinking is it spring yet????

winter crankbaits

I haven't been able to fish much lately but having the long holiday weekend let me sneak out for a bit. I found a few fish in about waist deep water on a gravel hump that separates a slow hole from the main flow. No go on the soft plastics and suspending minnow plugs but I did catch some fish on a new lipless crankbait that Vic is bringing to market. A lipless crank is actually a top notch winter lure. You just fish it differently than you do in the summer. Every one that knows me knows I'm a big fan of fishing a lipless crankbait at night for saugeye and summertime shovelheads but I'm fishing it completely differently for wintertime smallmouth.  I'd cast it out and let it fall to the bottom on a tight line. Then let it set for a few seconds then lift it off the bottom then let it fall to the bottom again on a tight line almost like fishing a worm. Lift fall lift fall. Every fish hit as the lure settled back after being lifted. Some days the fish like you popping it sharply off the bottom while some days an easy lift does the trick. I've even had days where you reel down to the lure and kind of shake it in place like you would a shaky head and barely move it and this does the trick. Today the fish actually hit the bait pretty well but some days in winter you just feel the weight of the fish on the line as you start the next lift. I'm not normally a big fan of fluorocarbon for smallmouth but I do like it for wintertime lipless cranks. It gives you sensitivity but with a larger diameter than braid which makes the bait fall back to the bottom slower.
Nothing of course beats wading a summertime stream for smalljaws but I do enjoy the stark beauty and silence of the river in winter. A silence that actually seems to magnify the calls of ducks winging up the river or the faraway music of a flock of sandhills high overhead. The winter river is a noisy quiet place. It seems dead and lifeless at first but by the time you are done it seems I have more wildlife encounters per hour spent on the river than any other time of year. Today was no different, in the distance I saw a huge flock of sandhills and watched a couple deer feed quietly on the opposite riverbank.

A bit of catch up.

I've been working a lot, that combined with the short days has really put a damper on my smallmouth fishing. I've caught a few this past week or so, just nobody really worth a photo. I've been catching several saugfish after dark on a new minnow plug Vic is coming out later this winter as well as a few stripey fish. I ended up feeling a thump one night and sinking one of the plugs trebles solidly into the paddle of a big spoonbill. Thank goodness it didn't break me off since the plug was so solidly embeded into it's bill imnot sure it would have come loose on its own. The big carp wasn't snared but actually ate a three inch grub. That seems to happen a bit more often in the cold. I guess as food gets harder to come by carp add a bit more meat to their diet. Then on my way home from tagging some more venison for the freezer I stopped at a wildlife area pond and caught some nice gills.

A big walleye from last night. On the Ohio River off a 45 degree rocky bank about an hour before daylight. I also saw another guy catch a fish about the same size about a half an hour before mine hit. Shallow in maybe three or four feet of fairly swift water. On a minnow plug I've been testing for Vic fished slowly against the current casting along the bank instead of across the stream. I think right now we are just starting the best time to catch big eyes. Walleye and saugeye and sauger migrate over the winter upstream and stage below both lowhead dams on medium sized rivers and big hydro dams on the Ohio where at the end of winter they spawn. At night all winter you can usually find them feeding on these shallow rocky banks if you are stealthy.

A bit of carping

Out in the garage I have an old freezer which holds all the stuff Brenda wont let me keep in the other deep freeze. Zip lock baggies of shad and cut bait for catfish. And baggies of leftovers, rice, beans, corn, bread, that kind of thing for carp. Well the thing was starting to fill up, time to go carping. Into a five gallon bucket went the leftovers, a bit of vegetable oil and a couple cups of corn meal. I like all the chum bits to be coated in oil and corn meal so there is constantly a smell and tiny bits dispersing thru the water. Bait was some boilies I made about a month ago and also put in the freezer. These I made out of flour, corn meal, eggs, anchovy paste, and vanilla. Form a dough roll it into little balls and boil. It's kinda fun if you are in the mood.
The rig is a flat no roll sinker, usually 1 1/2 or 2 ounces above a swivel and then a rubber band is tied in a knot around the line above the sinker to keep the sinker from sliding on the line. Then to the swivel is tied about an 8 or 10 inch leader to the hook. The boilie is not hooked on the hook but instead is attached with what is called a hair rig. Which basically means the boilie is tied off snug against the bend of the hook but the hook is free. There are a million you tube videos which show you how it is done. Then Mr. Carp sucks in the boilie and the hook sticks in his mouth when he tries to blow it back out or swim off. Then in his panic he runs and sets the hook against the heavy sinker. I'm usually a bit of a cheapskate but since the hook has to be super sharp to hook the fish on it's own I buy the best I can find in a size 6 or 8. There are several live bait hooks and specialty carp hooks that do a wonderful job, just buy a high end one. The pretty much look like a circle hook without the point turned in.
So I hit a section of river that is kind of a shallow flat but that still has a reasonably firm bottom that is out of the main current. I then broadcast the chum from the bucket as far out as I could throw it. Around the sinker and swivel I loosely packed some of this mix so that when I cast out the boilie there would for sure be chum lying all about it. This big mess I then lobbed into the middle of my chum bed set the rod into a forked stick, flipped the lever over on the baitrunner and sit back and watched the river while I waited for a fish.
Like usual it took a while for things to start up. The carp have to find the chum and then feed comfortably till they gain confidence before they will take your boilie. Because they are so plentiful and widely distributed in the US it is easy to overlook the fact that they are in fact among the smartest of all fish and actually not that easy to catch.
But once the action started it was pretty steady. Unfortunately this trip the fish ran a it on the small size averaging four or five pounds with the one decent one you see in the photo. If you have never tried it don't knock it. You can reasonably expect to catch a dozen extremely hard fighting fish from five to ten pounds on the average trip with the prospect of a big fish or two thrown in during the warmer months. In cold weather you will probably catch less but it seems like you have a better chance of a big fish. Try it you will like it.

Fishing with Goggins

So one of my personal heroes is David Goggins. It's actually realistic to say that David Goggins might just be the toughest man alive in the world today. I didn't say the most athletic or the best fighter or the best whatever, no just the toughest. David Goggins was a fat 300lb guy with a dead end job who looked in the mirror and said f#*k you, you pathetic loser this is not acceptable. in the next year he's 106 pounds lighter and a navy seal. And then goes thru Ranger school. David Goggins saw combat in Afghanistan then comes home and decides I'm not done. He becomes an world class ultramarathoner, races ultra long distance bicycle races, breaks the world record for pullups in 24 hours. 4030 chin-ups in one day. And lots more I can't remember off the top of my head. And he accomplished all this not thru talent but thru being tougher than anyone else, taping his ankles up when he has stress fractures, racing with piss and poop all over him because he's been too hurt to go to the bathroom but too mentally tough to quit the race. Elite athletes who have trained with the guy are in awe of his drive and obsession. He preaches that in the Seals if you had to go thru a door and clear a house there's never any doubt you are going thru the door. And if you're going thru the door anyway don't be remembered as the guy who barely opened the door and peeked in scared who was killed. Be the guy who went thru the door like a hero, with everything they had. And you need to do that with everything you do in life. If it's not worth being completely obsessed over it's not worth doing at all, if you are going to go thru the door with anything don't halfass, it go thru the damn door.

Whats this ultramarathoner  got to do with fishing? Obsession. Drive. Five years is 1825 days. I fished at least some on 1112 of those. Two days out of three. And I've done this for decades, it's just who I am. Like right now this time of year thru say January with my work schedule and short days I might only fish two or three times a week, summertime with long days and warm weather I might fish five or ten or twenty days in a row. Rain? Go fishing. Snow? Go fishing. Flooding waters? Go fishing.

I'm not very talented. People probably post a couple times a week I wish I could fish like you. I wish I could catch big fish like you. No you don't. I'm not using any secret technique or secret lure. I just go enough. Enough to know before I even go what I should do that day, What the river looks like, what the fish are doing today, where are the fish. To quote David Goggins talent is not required. What is required is the will to go. To fail and fail and fail and fail. Till eventually you learn where the fish are, what the river really is. Till in one of the suckiest parts of the country to fish you catch smallmouth like you are fishing Erie or the Susquehanna or the New.

Google David Goggins. Listen to what he says and apply it to whatever you are passionate about in life, cooking, fishing, rock climbing, backpacking, selling shoes, it doesn't matter he will change your life. Just be warned, he is the least politically correct person on earth. You will hear hundreds of curse words, you will hear truth. No "oh you are just big" No, your fat mother%$@#.  David Goggins makes you look in the mirror and see the truth. And says it's okay to be obsessed, it's okay to give everything you have to get to whatever goals you have in life. Even something as silly as learning your own little creek better than anyone else ever has.

lovely fall day

What perfect weather. It's just a joy to be alive on an evening like this. An evening where it's easy to be lazy. Which was how I started out. Like one of those old dogs you see on a country road that doesn't see much traffic. Where the old guy is just lying there in the sun right in the middle of the road hoping no one comes along and makes him move. Which is how I started out. I'd sleepily cast this minnow plug of Vic's across and upstream give it a couple sharp yanks to get it down then slowly work it back. Watching for deer across the river and listening to the tapping of a woodpecker back in the woods. You could tell it was coming though, there was bait everywhere. Constantly a baitfish or two would skip away spooked by the minnow plug if nothing else. There was just too much food here, the fish will come. The sun dropped a bit in the sky and the river turned to obsidian black and you could no longer see into the clear water. And as the light turned into that beautiful golden light that photographers love there was about a half an hour or so where the minnow plug had a hard time getting back before something would nail it. I've said it before but it's worth repeating. When this happens I try anymore to take a second and admire each fish before turning it loose. It's too easy to unhook and throw it back without even looking at it in our rush to catch another. Then the light lost it's golden magic and so did the fishing. I cast a bit longer as night fell on the river but nothing was happening now. A flock of geese flew upriver feeling the whole valley with noise. And then a great blue heron, looking like a pterodactyl in slilouette against the sky. The leaves crunched loud underfoot walking out in the dark. Not much is better than being on the river in fall.

Rivercraft verses Bushcraft

So I'm a guy that fishes constantly. And I love to camp on the river bushcraft style. But there are differences between the two. On the river I have my yak to haul things with so I an carry a bit more than if I were carrying it all on my back. Not a bunch more because the yak can only carry so much. But I can sometimes add a luxury item like the take apart steel griddle made by Dave Bradley. And I can bring two big sheath knives. Why? Well one is a traditional carbon steel bushcraft knife with a ferro rod also in it's sheath for camp. The other a stainless steel knife in a nylon sheath which I wear on my belt. I think it's important if you wade by yourself to carry a good knife with you at all times for safeties sake. One of the biggest dangers when wading deep is getting hung up on something, who knows an old trot line or limb etc. Like a dive knife for scuba diving you are probably never going to need it but if you do it might save your life. I use a thirty dollar Gerber Freeman as my fishing knife ninety percent of the time. With rubber non slip handles as well as a stainless blade and nylon sheath. I've waded with it completely submerged hundreds of times and it looks brand new. It's perfect for the job. I also carry the Buck 110 folder sometimes as well.

Fishing with the Huldre

Since fishing gets me out at odd hours when normal right thinking people are home asleep in their beds and fishing also gets me out off the beaten paths it seems like every year the most interesting people I meet are people I run into out fishing. So, I'm in one of those beer, bait, broasted chicken and gas stations somewhere down in Pike or Scioto county. It's 1030 in the morning Saturday and I've just drug a deer out and I want to eat, drop the deer off and go fishing. (Yeah, the perfect day, I know.) So I ask the lady behind the counter if it's too early to get a sandwich. She replies Honey is there ever a bad time for a sandwich? I lean against a rack of off brand potato chips and listen while she talks to me about her mother while she makes my order. (Ham and spinach, mayo, lettuce, tomato, onion, on dark rye. Perfection) It seems her mom used to warn her not to wander too far into the woods because the Huldre would get her. They were Danish and legend had it that back in the day God visited their little village in the woods. One mom with a lot of small children didn't have time to wash all her children before God got there and hid some of them in the woods. God decreed these unwashed children were to always haunt the woodlands. A warning to children every where to wash up and stay out of the woods I guess. As she wrapped up my sandwich and rang me up she said softly she never knew she would end up living where every living soul seemed to be a Huldre. Smelling of woodsmoke with deer blood on my jeans I certainly didn't have room to talk.
Later pulled off beside the river I googled a bit on my phone while eating my sandwich. It seems the Huldre or Huldra are woodland versions of mermaids tempting men to wander out into the woods and never return. Looking at the turning leaves and the clear water of the river I can think of worse fates than wandering these hilly woods in Southern Ohio hill country forever.
The fishing was just what it's supposed to be with these water temperatures, which is to say it was great. I'm testing a minnow plug my brother is thinking of having made and today the fish love it. I'd reel it fast for a foot or two then full stop before burning it again. You would start cranking again and the rod would load up or fish would launch skyward. These precious fall days are simply as good as life gets around here and I'd come here for the great fishing rather than any great truths or woodland spirits though I guess you could find either here among the worn weathered stones and fallen sycamore leaves along the creek. The experience of stream fishing smallmouth will never be better than it is right now, get out there and get you some while it lasts.

How to build a fire.

So a friend texted me the other day. A bit of a new to the outdoors kind of person. Well they were outside, had a bunch of paper and were trying to start a fire and couldn't. I honestly think your average person anymore without lighter fluid or gas or something similar would really struggle to start a fire out in the woods with nothing but say a lighter or some matches.
So here's my little short course on getting it done. We are going to use a lighter and a pocket knife. Because well you should always carry a pocket knife, if you don't have one go out and get one. Better would be a nice fixed blade sheath knife but a pocket knife works. First, short of using a blowtorch you are just not going to get anything going bigger than a pencil. You really want stuff much smaller than that.
Look around, usually somewhere close to you is always drier and better drained than anywhere else. Walk over and look closely at the ground, even if you dont see sticks or limbs there are usually tiny sticks smaller than a matchstick down to say a third that diameter lying about in any woods. Gather as much of that as you can. You really cannot get too much. A nice big bunch that you would have a hard time fitting in a brown paper lunch sack would be ideal. Okay now lets try and find some good stuff. Are there any small dead bushes about? In most woods small trees and bushes are continuously sprouting up only to get shaded out and die when they are about head high. If not look for small dead branches on larger trees. If you find enough of these you can skip the first step of gathering tiny stuff off the ground. Break these up into short, say ten inch lengths and sort according to size. You want again a nice healthy pile of each size. Its much better to have too much than run out and have your fire die. All of the work in building a fire is in the preparation. Now take a few of your sticks that are say as big around as your thumb and carefully shave off some till just the end of each shaving is attached. Then repeat over and over till the end of your stick has a big wad of shavings attached. This is called a featherstick BTW. Any shavings you cut off you should save too. If its wet these will be your main fire starters. In damp conditions using the pocket knife to shave down sticks will expose the dry inside wood so your fire will take.
So lets start our fire. Lay down a layer of sticks side by side as big around as your wrist to create a little platform to build your fire on. In the center leave out say three sticks so you can put your match or lighter under your small stuff to light it. On top of this platform lie a big double handfull of your smallest driest material and or any loose shavings you shaved off with your knife. Under this bundle of stuff hold your lighter or match till this tiniest stuff starts.
On top of this, as it burns carefully lean your shaved sticks and small sticks in a tepee. Adding bigger and bigger material till you have a fire.
All of this is a lot easier with a fire starter of some sort. I personally am a huge fan of cotton balls and Vaseline. Smear some Vaseline on cotton balls then shred the cotton balls as you work the Vaseline into them. they start super easy and burn long enough to start and even dry out small tinder like tiny twigs or shavings you have made with your knife. They then smash down to nearly nothing and you can stow a ziplock baggie of them in your daypack or even in your car and never know they are there. just pull out a bit, fluff it back up and you are ready to go.  The shavings in the photo were made with a cheap 4 dollar Walmart knife. You don't need a survival knife and beautiful feather sticks you have created to start a fire though it certainly makes the job easier. Again we are not trying to recreate the wheel here or get too fancy and go into flint and steel or ferrocerium rods or other cool stuff like that, we are just talking the average joe thru a simple fire with a bic lighter.

Wakefield Indian Mound

Visited the mound cemetery this past week in Pike County, Ohio. Four distinct mounds that are all connected at their bases in a way I've never seen before. From what I've read they were built by the Adena people who lived the area from 1000 to 200 bc.  I was a bit disappointed to see gravestones on the mounds themselves till I looked a bit closer. The tallest mound is probably 30 feet tall and has a stone right at the peak. But the stone is pretty amazing too. Its the stone of Lt colonel John Guthery who was born in 1744 and died in 1823. He was in the Pennsylvania militia during the revolutionary war. In fact the whole section around the mounds are covered in graves dating to the 1800's. There are several revolutionary war, war of 1812, and civil war veterans buried here and it's just about the most interesting cemetery I've poked around in despite it's small size. The history just keeps going and going. In addition to the indian mounds and old gravestones the place is right at the confluence where an ancient stream connected to the Teays river. The Teays was like a preglacial version of the Ohio river and drained this whole part of the country. The New River and Kanawha in West Virginia follow the path of the Teays but then in it's lower reaches it ran more northerly than the Ohio river and the flowed North thru the valley the Scioto flows south in now. At the old confluence here the tiny Big Beaver Creek now joins the Scioto. As far as I know no real scientific work has ever been done at the mounds but back in the day some locals dug into one of the small mounds and found a girl buried there wrapped in bark. It's not more than a minute off route 32 so if you are out that way it's an easy and quick visit.