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...