jungle giant

A bit of jungle fishing last night. No trail to the stream, instead a long bushwack thru an absolute jungle. But I was repaid with a jungle giant on a big curly shad. Those are two photos of the same fish plus a few little guys. Right on the edge of a strong riffle and a head high cliff.

clear water....

At the end of a long gravel road I finally found some clear water. Seven stripes this evening on a curly shad.

No good deed goes unpunished....

I really needed to go fishing. But the rivers and streams as everyone knows are up and visibility is zero. What to do? Catch some channel cats of course! A baitholder hook, a splitshot 8 inches up the line and a tub of chicken liver. The river looked about as bad as I've ever seen it and I was thinking this was a horrible idea. But a few big handfuls of ripe razzberries convinced me being outside wasn't too bad of an idea. Then, bump, bump, and a small channel cat was swung up out of a muddy eddy. Hey maybe this isn't such a terrible idea. I mean if the fish didn't bite in muddy water this year they would have all starved to death weeks ago. I ended up catching a half dozen channels and in a deep eddy close to main current a pretty nice hybrid decided it wanted some liver too. I rested the spot where the hybrid ate about a half an hour and came back with a big curly shad on a jig head. 15 casts later a dandy hybrid hammered it almost right under the rod tip. It streaked out into the swollen main current where I had a heck of a time turning it. Then it got tangled up in a stick floating downstream and towed that around for thirty seconds before finally getting free of the snag and I was able to beach it. 20 minutes later thunder was rumbling loud and the sky was jet black. I decided to head back for the car. Too late. I got absolutely punished. It turns out frog togs will only keep out so much rain. I guess they are water resistant instead of water proof. I know that by the time I got back to the car I'd have felt drier if I'd simply jumped in the river. Enough rain had run down my legs into my rubber boots that back home on the porch I'd turn them up and pour a cup or two of water out of each boot. It was a pretty eventful trip for a flooded muddy river!

I caught a fish...

I'm fishing my favorite stripey bait, Vic's pearl with a black back paddletail when I got a little bite. Just a little "boink". I set the hook and holy h*## broke loose. The fish streaked along just under the surface pushing up a big wake. Then a giant boil as it swirled, then ran the other way still throwing up a wake as it pushed water.  I've got 15lb braid spooled on the pflueger arbor and it had the 7ft fast action Littlemiami rod bent into a horseshoe. Then the fish just charged my direction and I'm reeling like a maniac trying to keep slack out of the line. A few more wild runs and then I had her. No scale, no ruler, I ran out before daylight with a raincoat and a ziplock baggie full of lures. I'm not even going to speculate on size, it doesn't really matter, it is the fish of the year so far in my eyes. If for nothing else just because of the sheer excitement of the fight.

6/7

The rivers are lower but still a muddy mess. Ended up with a couple small ones and a decent stripe which were all completely out of the current off to the side and below a big riffle. The photo looks like its close to dark but it was actually about five. Just really dark and threatening rain....pretty much standard for this year.

Night time is the right time

Some road construction has taken away my parking spot requiring probably a 25 minute walk to my stripey hotspot the last few days. But three things have made it worthwhile. One this has assured that I've had the place to myself. Two, I've been lucky and it never blew out as bad as most places in all the rain we've had lately. And last but not least for the past couple weeks the best fishing has been right at dark or even afterward so there is no mad rush to get there asap after work.
Had several spectacular blowups but no hookups on a topwater. The fish all came on, yeah, you guessed it, a paddletail swimbait.

all american

Decided I needed a change of pace this morning. Muddy water, channel cats and cut bait all go together like baseball and hotdogs.