Muddy water smackdown

Got to where I planned to fish to find things really muddy. Not up but muddy. Oh well this year it seems you fish in mud or you don't fish. It never rained on me but thunder rumbled ominously in the distance for much of the evening. And it was obviously raining somewhere as the stream rose four or five inches while I fished. Which seemed to really put the fish in the mood. Nothing on the topwater tonight but probably a dozen on the biggest curly shad fished on an underspin. The idea was to give the fish something they could find down there in the mud and it seemed to work. Fish were out of the swiftest current but right up against it. Caught another pure striper mixed in with the hybrids again tonight. If some of these guys survive a few years they are really going to make things interesting here in southern Ohio. Saw a deer feeding on the other side of the stream, had a beaver swim by ten feet away, caught some nice stripes, just an absolutely swell evening.

5/29

bloodsuckers

Hit the river late with every intent on fishing a bit after dark tonight. That is till every mosquito seemingly in the state decided to try and eat me alive. I'd look down and there would be three or four on my arm at the same time. Needless to say I didn't make it till after dark like I'd hoped. I did catch one good hybrid and a few small ones on the paddletail swimbait before giving in. The fish hit in waist deep slower water off to the side of a fast shallow riffle. 

Trifecta

Caught the stripey trifecta tonight. Some white bass, three hybrids and a true striper. The white bass on clear with silver grubs, the hybrids on a paddletail swimbait and the stripe whacked a zara spook. The hybrids and the striper didn't come out to play till the last 45 minutes of daylight.

Sploosh!!!

What an exciting morning. I'm up on top of this little 6 foot high cliff working this zara spook back to me. Maybe a rods length to my right a couple big rocks stick out and create this really strong seam. As I'm lifting the spook up out of the water this huge hybrid comes streaking out of the seam and swirls at the spook. I make a 15 foot cast and like five foot back a gigantic sploosh and the spook goes flying thru the air and the instant it hits the water is hammered again and knocked back in the air. I walk the bait back and two casts later this repeats itself. I walk the spook back till its hanging right below the rod tip. And hovering under the bait is the giant hybrid. An upper 20's in length fish in the 9 to 11 pound range I'd guess from staring straight down at it from atop my little cliff. What a view. Then it just ghosts back into the seam. 15 minutes later a beaver swims downriver and as i'm watching it a toilet flushes under my spook and I feel the fish for just a split second but don't hook up.
Up the bank the main current hits the close bank and I flip the spook upstream and reel and walk it frantically and a big smallmouth whacks the bait and jumps like four times. I'm on top of another high bank and its like how do I land this fish???? The fish is pretty whipped and I shove the rod thru this bush to hold it and climb down the bank on some roots to land the fish! It was just about the longest skinniest smallie I've ever seen and not anywhere near the heaviest smallmouth of the year even though it was one of the longest.
Another cast up the bank and another big smallmouth comes up and blasts the spook but doesn't get hooked.
I've definitely got plans to return for a rematch with the big hybrid and smallmouth. Maybe an after dark trip with a big prop plug or a jumbo curly shad....

nite time...

Some night time hybrid action. The bite completely shut down once the sun was up and hit the water. On a big popper I bought out of a bargain bin at a tackle show and the usual paddletail swimbait. Caught two good ones and two small guys.

Peaches in the summertime...

I'm a big fan of old bluegrass and mountain music. One really old song, shady grove talks of "peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall".  Which I always took to mean everything has a time and a place. Of course this song predates container ships from south America and fruits being picked green and then ripened by exposing them to ethylene gas but that's another story. Anyways back to the point, peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall is the way I try to fish. What, today, is going to be the best stream fishing? Where would be best? What's in season so to speak. The people that know me know I'm crazy about smallmouth fishing and do it well over a hundred days a year. Which you would never guess by looking at my facebook posts lately which have been mostly pictures of hybrid stripers. And I've gotten some messages asking where are the smallmouth pics. Well, the places I catch smallies at have been either flooded or the smallies have been spawning. Studies show that something like 15 percent of river smallmouth don't spawn every year. And its been my experience that many of those are larger fish so some years when the conditions are perfect I just keep smallmouth fishing during the spawn just not targeting spawning fish. Well conditions have been anything from perfect so I've switched to hybrids. Which conditions have been swell for. High water has them running way up my smallmouth streams which means I can stay away from the dreaded Ohio river dams and fish for them in peace. I know the last time we had a high water year like this guys caught wipers all summer all the way past Dayton in the Great Miami which is a long long ways from the Ohio. So I'm hoping even though things are going to swing back to smallmouth fishing here soon that even us small river and stream guys can keep catching some stripes mixed in with our bronze all summer. Not quite as big of stripes tonight as the last four or five nights but a few more in number which made up for it. On the paddletail  swimbait just below and around a set of old stone bridge abutments that set in current.