as darkness decends

Caught a pretty good one right at dark tonight on the ole paddletail swimbait. Cool evening saw an eagle in the distance, a beaver, and coolest of all an otter. I usually only run into otters here in southern Ohio a couple times a year so that was really neat.

blast off...

Its been busy at work. So today was a mad dash out the door with a rod and a zip lock baggie full of swimbaits and jigheads. With smallmouth I'm usually guilty of having ten colors of soft plastics along with a variety of other baits with me all the time. But when chasing stripey fish I'm pretty content with Vic's paddletail swimbait and a couple zara spooks. With hybrids I think where and when are much more key than what 90 percent of the time. It's a case of "well with these water levels and these temps I need to try here, here or here".

Anyways I'm fishing a beautiful living room sized eddy of waist to head deep water off to one side of a fast riffle when whack and the rod bent double as a very big fish screamed off downstream. Then the rod went straight, no fish. The jig hook was straightened. D@#%!! that was a fish that would have gotten a Kaboom out of ole Gibbs too.

Then after retying and maybe ten minutes of casting, another strike and another fish just blasting off. I know I make fun sometimes of these things because they don't jump like my beloved smallmouth but the truth is nothing this side of the ocean pulls like these things and they are a close second on my list of favorite fish. And this fish just seems to zoom out of the eddy into the fast water in a split second. After three or four more screaming runs I get lucky and land this one. What a swell evening this turned out to be...

A bit of everything

I guess I ordered the variety pack tonight. Caught some smallmouth, some hybrids, some white bass and even one small true striper. This is like the 3rd or 4th small true striper I've caught so far this spring here in southern Ohio which has me feeling pretty good about catching some good ones a few years down the road. All on a Vic Coomer paddletail fished in fast rocky water in a small stream that dumps into the Ohio river.

Highs and lows

Although several rivers here in southern Ohio are completely blown out at the same time there are several that are in perfect shape. The storms of the last few days really hit hard where they hit but they seem to have missed as many places as they hit. In fact even the blown out streams have tributaries that look like they haven't seen rain in weeks. So if your section of river is a muddy flooded mess right now a stream ten minutes down the road might be fishing really well. This nice stripe hit a paddletail swimbait in a current break off to the side of a strong riffle right after daylight.
Turkeys cackled from the trees across the river, ducks flying low and fast upstream, wildflowers bursting into bloom everywhere. It was a magic morning afield.

mud fishing

The river has crept up a bit the last two days. But the weather was fabulous so I went fishing anyways. Visibility was virtually nil so expectations were low. Sometimes fishing is just an excuse to spend time along a river and this was what I thought today would be. So I started off taking photos of wildflowers, watching redtails fly overhead and throwing a few obligatory casts. I'm walking along and here was this clump of willows that in summer was normally dry but now had water gushing all round it. The clump of willows created a current break which along with a curving bank created a slack water area maybe ten feet long and six or seven feet across. I pitched a paddletail  swimbait underhanded up close to the willow clump and blam! a big smallie just nailed it. The Little Miami rod bent into the cork as the fish screamed away. A few wild jumps and I landed a gorgeous smallie. Hmm... I continued up the river but now looking hard for little cuts out of the current. The next spot was a channel behind a small island that would be way too shallow in a few days but now was full of muddy water and on the far side was another pocket of dead water. Sure enough two casts an a nice smallmouth again hammered the swimbait. As did a half dozen other fish out of similar spots over the next couple hours. None as big as the first but a really nice average size. I know legendary baseball announcer Joe Nuxhall used to say "if you swing the bat you're dangerous".
Which I guess is sorta what happened today by going fishing even though it seemed like a lost cause.
The fish don't get to stay home when the rivers up, the river is their home.

allmost bit off more than I could chew... (weather wise)

Took the new Jackson kayak out for her maiden voyage. It's amazingly stable and a great fishing platform. And just light enough that an old man like me can handle her. Which was important tonight since I portaged below a lowhead dam fished there a while then floated downstream to take out just above another lowhead. I caught a couple small shovelhead on a grub and a few smallies on a willowleaf spinnerbait below the dam. But the real quality smallmouth fishing came a mile or so downstream where the river bends digging out a deep hole that water pours into over chute in a riffle that has some very big rocks in it. Here some great smallmouth just absolutely hammered Vic's paddletail swimbait on a 1/4 ounce jighead. No guessing if you had a strike tonight. Just a solid thump and the rod bent double before you could hardly set the hook.
And then the weather hit. The sky got black and big nickel sized rain drops began splatting on the rocks. Dark was going to come early and I was still a ways up the river. Time to just secure everything solid to the yak and head for the take out. Which I made in time to load up the kayak with just enough light to see by. Very impressed with the Jackson Bite as a river boat. Not overly heavy like some boats more suited for lakes or float trips with a couple guys to help carry the load. At 72 pounds I can still unload and load the Bite by myself and launch it at less than ideal places. And the thing has cargo space like a floating pickup truck for overnight floats this summer.

The past few days...

I've been fishing quite a bit the past few days but haven't gotten around to posting so here is a bit of a catch up post. The rivers here in southern Ohio have been up and nasty for seemingly forever. Even now they aren't in good shape, just barely on the edge of lure fishing water. If I had more sense I probably should have chased cats this week. But I did find a creek running quite a bit clearer than the river and where its water mixed with the muddy river water I found a white bass bonanza, I guess I've caught forty or fifty the last few days but by and large they were pretty small fish. I did catch two small pure stripers and a few wipers mixed in. In the muddy river water next to the clearer creek water I caught a few sauger every day, They were very small mostly nine or ten inches long with only a couple going past a foot. All the stripey fish and saugfish came on a chartreuse metalflake grub. I caught a few decent smallmouth out of the river itself on a smoke metalflake grub making short pitches to a concrete wall directing current under a bridge. The only casts that connected were ones where the jig landed within an inch or two of the wall.