the carp caper

So you are standing up on top of this wall maybe ten feet over the water. It's night time. There are lights on poles way up high and on the other side. So you don't cast a shadow on the water and you can see down in the water. Out in front of you is a strong current, out there about a casts length. Out there is where you catch game fish. When you hook a fish you walk it down the wall where you can land it. Except not tonight. Absolutely nothing is going on.
But look down underneath you. Down at the base of the wall hanging out in the slack water you an see a dozen carp finning lazily. Nobody was any size but you could a couple were mirrors and one was so pale as to look almost white. There aren't many mirrors around my streams so I really wanted one.
So the next night I'm back ready to catch one. Two ounce sinker, a cage feeder, a hair rigged boilie. Classic, standard carp rigging. I lower the rig into the water. Mind you I didn't cast it. I lowered it down the wall. Blip, blip, it enters the water. And just like that every carp slowly fades away and is gone. What the... ??? A half hour later the baitrunner purrs. It's a channel cat. Then another half hour and I hook up again. Another small catfish. No carp.
The next night I'm back with another rig. A small treble hook, no weight and a wheatie dough ball.
Tonights haul, a bass out in the current and a carp on the doughball. A small three pound carp. Okay this is getting personal now.
So the next nights rig is getting a bit wild. First the night before just before I left I scattered corn into the water all along the wall to get the carp confident in feeding on it. The rig is two pieces of corn and a yellow foam fly fishing strike indicator hair rigged. Nothing else. The rig lowers into the water so softly I cant even be sure the exact it enters the water. I keep the bail flipped open and pinch the line gently between thumb and index finger of my free hand. The strike indicator balances the weight of the hook so that it just kind of floats along underwater slowly making a big circle at the base of the wall then out three or four feet then slowly drifting back to the wall. Halfway thru the second turn, bump, and I drop the line. It just sits there then twitches. I flip the bail over reel down and set. Fish on.... Yeah I went to a lot of trouble to catch a half dozen rather small carp and some even smaller channels. But it was rather difficult, different, and I learned a thing or two. I enjoyed the heck out of it.

River Giant part II

Yeah I cant believe it. Today had already been the best day in years before I even went fishing. My wife needs a kidney and today we found a donor that matches, like I said if I didn't catch a fish it didn't matter today. Anyways back to the fishing report... Two weeks ago I catch an absolute giant smallmouth. 21 inches and fat as a pig. I said in my fishing report back then that I doubted I'd ever again catch a fish to rival that fish in bulk in an Ohio stream. Little did I know that less than two weeks later I'd catch a fish in the same class. It's only 20.5 inches long but fat as a bluegill. Only 20.5? Never mind, forget I said something that stupid. It was 20.5 inches long and fat as a bluegill. Probably 5th or 6th on my pb Ohio length list but definitely in the top two for overall bulk. That's 35 or 40 years of fanatical 100 to 200 days a year fishing.
I'd been skunked at this spot twice in the last week. But it was in between several other places and so convenient to hit for a few minutes on the way to or from somewhere else. And it just looked so good. This time of year when the waters low and warm I'm looking for the fastest water in several miles of river. If there is a big fish feeding it will be there. And the warm water has their metabolism ramped up so they are more likely to feed. I remember posting last year I really hated for the hottest part of the year to go away. It really makes finding the best spot easier. Usually the very fastest water isn't water made that way by a natural feature. A big old bridge abutment, a washed out old dam, huge pieces of concrete dumped by a railroad, an old buick, that sort of thing. Something so big that it can stay right there in the fastest flow of the stream and funnel that making it even faster. Natural rocks in our southern Ohio rivers just aren't big enough not to be washed away in these kinds of places. There are exceptions of course, heck, Clifton Gorge on the Little Miami has rocks that look like they are from the Big South Fork or the New. But 99 percent of the time you want to find concrete in fast water. Not just fast but sweep you off your feet and drown you fast if you aren't paying attention.
Which is exactly what this place had. A huge slab of concrete from who knows what or when sitting in fast head deep water shunting it all to one side creating a raging chute that looks like something out of a whitewater kayaking video. But I'd been skunked here twice. I had a pearl paddletail swimbait of Vic's on a plain roundball jighead. Three or four casts. Then I threw it into the edge of the fast water pulled it out and let it fall on a tight line. Thump. Okay it's a big channel, this is the kind of spot your about as likely to catch a cat as a smallmouth. Then it comes up. And everything seemed to speed up till I slid her out on the gravel. It's been one hell of a neat day...

I've created a monster...

So I'm close friends with Britney, she's 20, never been fishing much less caught one, never waded in a stream, never kayaked, never ate a hotdog cooked on a stick over a fire. And now we are going to check off all those boxes on one trip. I'm a little nervous about how this is going to turn out...
Little did we know she was born for this. We checked off those boxes and then a few more. Catching crawdads for bait, checking out deer skulls, turning over rocks looking for creepy crawlies, catching toads and frogs, hiked thru the woods to look at big trees, sneaking up close to watch great blue herons. The whole thing turned into one of those grand adventures that summertime is made for. And for the record she caught the catfish all by her self. Four foot nine inches of future fishing legend.  Me, I never caught a fish but still had one of the best trips of the year. Not much beats poking around a creek on a hot summers evening.

A river giant

So this fishing report really starts over a month ago. I misjudge a cast and my grub goes too far up in the riffle and over a rock into this tiny slot about 15 inches wide on the other side. I give a quick jerk to flip the jig back over the rock. And over the rock in a wide arching somersaulting jump comes one of the biggest smallmouth I've ever seen. The problem is the fish goes one direction out of the leap and my jig goes another. About a week later I had the fish on again. Again in the slot and again the fish came unbuttoned. Then the next trip no strikes. I finally give up and wade up to check out its hangout. And out comes the fish. And a few more trips follow with no strikes in the spot and no sign of the fish.
Finally time enough to be able to spend the night on the river. Camping out on the river is one of my greatest pleasures. And last night was a perfect example of why. A bald eagle winging up the river. A snowy egret flushing ahead of the yak. A few decent fish, a tarp shelter, campfire and a couple big andouille sausage cooked over the flames. Two barred owls, one on each side of camp, sending out haunting calls. The only slight downer on the trip was the river was low. Very low and the slot was only about an inch deep with just a trickle running thru.
It was now pitch black and calm the only sound the slightest murmur of the river and the occasional owl still calling. Time to fish. But off comes the 8lb pound mono and on goes a spool of 20 lb braid. Instead of the usual grub or curly shad I tie on a buzzbait. A big 1/2 ounce triple wing model not one of those little cute ones you sometimes see guys throw on the river. Two casts in and a beautiful Fish Ohio smallmouth tries to rip the rod out of my hand. Then nothing more for ten minutes as I work my way up towards the slot. I'd probably logged 30 hours in this pool trying to hook the fish again in daylight and I was comfortable slowly wading in the dark. About twenty feet this side of the slot the river still ran pretty strongly over the riffle. Enough that I'd thought about running the riffle here in the Jackson on the way in before deciding to beach the yak and hike down to camp. I threw across this run into the slack water on the other side and then brought the buzzbait back at a right angle to the current. Nothing on the far side but just as the lure cleared the current on my side something hammered the bait. The rod bent all the way into the cork Tenn handle and I was sure I had a big channel on. No somersaults or leaps skyward like before just a heavy strong pull. A really strong catfish or hybrid striper pull. Then the fish comes up with it's head out right at the bank and I slide her out on the gravel. Holy $#@ its a smallmouth. The smallmouth. Fully twice as heavy and several inches longer than the fish I'd been so pleased with a few minutes before. I'd guessed right before on how big I thought the fish was. Just a tiny sliver under 21 inches and fat as a sumo wrestler. A fish worthy of whoops and high fives at St Clair or the boundary waters much less southern Ohio. I doubt I will ever see a fish rival this one in bulk in my streams ever again. Come to think of it my biggest smallmouth ever came from the boundary waters in the middle of the night on a buzzbait as well. I guess I'll be stalking the rivers at night a lot more in the future.
Just before daylight a shovelhead hit a big swimbait and the most exciting fish of the next morning

was a smallmouth of about 18 inches that hit a buzzbait with about a rods length of line out. The fish zoomed around in a big semicircle and actually jumped right out on the bank at my feet. It flopped a couple times, threw the buzzbait, flopped back in the water and was gone. It was about as exciting a 3 seconds of fishing you will ever see. 

Daylight brought smaller fish but some cool encounters with wildlife. I'm walking down the path and two deer take off busting thru the brush with white tails wagging. And as they do three racoons flush up a couple trees scared by the commotion. On my side of the tree peering around the tree trunks like scared squirrels. If you look closely at one of my pics you can just make out the closest one. Then another eagle sighting, a beaver and some dink smallmouth to finish off the trip.

Easily one of the most exciting and enjoyable trips I've had in years. And some serious food for thought about night fishing rivers for trophy smalljaws...

summertime and the livin is easy...

With the streams lower than they have been all year and as warm as bathwater it seemed like a good idea to make good on one of the goals I'd set last winter. I'd vowed to do more hybrid fishing which I've felt like I've done and I'd also vowed to get back to basics and at least a few times mess around with live bait. Just gathering your bait is just about as much fun as the actual fishing. And the warm low water was perfect for wading in with the seine and getting some craws. Tackle wasn't anything special a small baitholder hook and a split shot crimped on ten inches or so above that. I did hike a pretty good ways from the road though to give myself a chance at some better fish. Turns out the channel cats were really in the mood for craws and I quickly lost track of how many I caught. Maybe 15 with most being in the one to four pound category but I did manage to catch a couple brutes. If you have never waded a creek in a pair of sneakers and swimming trunks pitching craws into likely spots you are missing one of summertimes true pleasures....

seeing double

Everything was doubled tonight. On the way to the river I saw two bald eagles sitting in two sycamores. I then twice jumped two deer at once. (one was a monster buck btw) And I caught two Fish Ohio smallmouths on two different lures. One on a mylar paddleswim and one on a curly shad. Hopefully this means tomorrow ill have my second day in a row like this.  Both fish were in really fast really shallow water just, umm... in two different spots.

making lemonade...

Too much work has made me a very dull boy so when I got a few hours free I ran for the river even if it meant hitting the river a few hours before daylight. Luckily this time of year that's one of the best times to fish. Just be sure and stick to a section of river you have already learned well during daylight hours. This morning a buzzbait was the ticket till the sun came up. Once the sun came up though the buzzbait  quit producing though I caught a couple more on a curly shad before having to quit about an hour after dawn.