finally.. back to our regularly scheduled smallmouth fishing

Swell evening on the river. When I first got there a storm was somewhere nearby and it was really windy. I happened to look up just as a bald eagle went sailing by at tree top level about a million miles an hour. Soon after that it turned into a beautiful evening with deer everywhere. The biggest excitement of the evening was having a fish blast the curly shad then take off screaming drag thru a swift run. Then you could tell the fish was still on but it wasn't moving. Hung up. I inched out slowly into the swift water thinking for sure I had a huge smallmouth hung up out there. Finally I reached where it was hung and could by reaching down till not much more than my neck was above water feel around to where the line was hung up on a piece of metal sticking out of a chunk of busted up concrete. I freed the line and by a miracle the fish was still on. About a six pound  channel cat. I was having enough trouble just wading the water was so fast so I didn't snap a photo of the cat. The smallmouth were biting though. Everything was on a curly shad fished in the fastest water I could find. Except for one fish in calm water that absolutely hammered a buzzbait on three casts in a row without getting hooked. It sure is nice to be able to actually do some wading after all the never ending high water...