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Dances With Smallies

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  1. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from Greenyak in 9/11/2016 Stream Smallie Smackdown   
    The company I work for has a mentor program.  I didn't have a preference on a mentor this year so I was randomly paired with a guy from an entirely different area of the business that I would not have likely met otherwise.  The first couple times we met we discovered that we had a mutual obsession for all things hunting and fishing.  About a month ago, we met for lunch and he was showing me pictures from his trip flyfishing for bonefish.  I said that was awesome and proceeded to show him pictures from my stream smallie adventures this summer.  His eyes got big and he said, "Whoa, I love stream fishing for smallies!  Where did you go for that?  I just moved back here a few years ago and have been looking for places like that!"  Now, I am usually highly secretive of the creek data I've accumulated and keep it pretty close to the chest, but after getting to know this guy, I've discovered he's a great person and an ethical outdoorsman. I also learned he is as secretive as me and I learned later that he has some good creeks I didn't know about .  Therefore, I told him that I have a couple places we could wade fish, but I wished I had a canoe to travel down stream to some accesses I've found.  He smiled like a kid in a candy store and said he had a canoe that he could load up and we needed to go! 
    Well, Sunday was the big day.  I met him at 5 a.m. to drive a few hours to our take-out to drop off my car.  He said that at one point his truck said 49 degrees F.  I'd believe it because when we got to our put-in it was pretty chilly.  The creek was running perfect and clear.  We got on the water at sunrise and it was still chilly for this time of year.  The bite was pretty slow for the first hour or so.  Then it started warming up and fishing got red hot.  I'd have a hard fighting smallie on, then he would, or we both would.  This continued on the rest of the morning and we were having so much fun we lost track of time.  We made it down river to where another creek joins in, about a mile or so from our put-in. At this point we had caught 40+ fish.  The other stream was pretty stained from rain a day or two earlier.  It was sad to see the crystal clear stream we started out on turn brown.  It was probably all for the best though because we had another six miles to go and it was already well after 1:00.  We laughed at how much time we spent on the first mile and then hurried our way downstream.  
    We didn't fish much on the rest of the trip, but did manage to catch another 15-20 by trolling and stopping a couple times at spots we just couldn't pass up.  We both agreed that next time we need to spend more time on this lower stretch because we had to pass on some really good looking water.  Luckily, my estimate of how many miles we had to go was right (for awhile I was thinking I greatly underestimated the mileage) and we were off the water by 6:00.  Although we ran out of fishing time, we had a great day.  We achieved the stream bass grand-slam by catching smallmouth, largemouth, spotted bass, and rock bass.  I caught one rock bass the size of my hand.  We also caught various sunfish and I had a huge gar hit a Ned rig right at the boat.  We didn't catch anything real big but plenty of 12-13 inch smallies and my friend caught a nice 14+ incher.  I also caught my first ever mean mouth bass.  Thanks to you OAF guys I could identify it.  Otherwise, I would have just thought it was a really weird looking smallie (sorry, no pic).  All fish were released.  We also saw a lot of other wildlife including a big soft shell turtle, three water moccasins, and three northern water snakes.  It was a fantastic day that will forever be imprinted in my memory.



  2. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Brian Sloss in some smallmouth   
    Since the higher water has receded to fishable levels, I have been getting some guide trips in.  The water remains up a bit and there is a stain to the river.  I have done a trout trip and a couple of smallmouth trips.  The trout has been ok, but the smallmouth are loving the stained water.  Here are some highlights.


  3. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from Johnsfolly in Marathon Key   
    I've fished in the Keys from Marathon a few times.  We didn't have a guide but still managed to get into a bunch of fish.  The time of year I was down there we got into a bunch of Spanish mackerel and various kinds of snapper; had a blast.  A friend of mine just got done fishing the flats around Sugarloaf Key, I believe, and said they got into some huge tarpon.  I think fly fishing for bonefish in the flats would be awesome.  From what I've seen, the guide prices seem reasonable.  The wife and I did a mangrove kayak tour down there last spring (very cool) and our kayak tour guide gave me a contact for a guy he says is a great fishing guide and great guy:  K. Johnson (305) 481-0589.  
    Anyway, since you're going with your wife, one thing my wife and I thought was really neat was visiting the Turtle Hospital in Marathon.  They are a nonprofit that rescues sea turtles who have been injured by boats, eating trash, etc.  Really fascinating and a great cause. You even get to meet some of the temporary and permanent reptilian residents.  Marathon is a great place so I hope you go and enjoy it.  I'm jealous!
  4. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from timinmo in Marathon Key   
    I've fished in the Keys from Marathon a few times.  We didn't have a guide but still managed to get into a bunch of fish.  The time of year I was down there we got into a bunch of Spanish mackerel and various kinds of snapper; had a blast.  A friend of mine just got done fishing the flats around Sugarloaf Key, I believe, and said they got into some huge tarpon.  I think fly fishing for bonefish in the flats would be awesome.  From what I've seen, the guide prices seem reasonable.  The wife and I did a mangrove kayak tour down there last spring (very cool) and our kayak tour guide gave me a contact for a guy he says is a great fishing guide and great guy:  K. Johnson (305) 481-0589.  
    Anyway, since you're going with your wife, one thing my wife and I thought was really neat was visiting the Turtle Hospital in Marathon.  They are a nonprofit that rescues sea turtles who have been injured by boats, eating trash, etc.  Really fascinating and a great cause. You even get to meet some of the temporary and permanent reptilian residents.  Marathon is a great place so I hope you go and enjoy it.  I'm jealous!
  5. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to budman in Morels 2017   
    Have been out 7 time so far this year. Got shut out the first 4 trips. We finally got a couple of good rains and they are starting to pop up. Found 17 Monday, 20 on Tuesday and 50 today. They say we are going to get more rain here in NE Oklahoma and I hope it only gets better.


  6. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Norm M in a river in Illinois   
    Sunday April 2 2017 , my last day of work after 40 years of railroading on the Illinois Central . I decided the best way to celebrate was by going fishing for river smallmouth bass . It felt right to go old school , something I would have used 40 years ago .
       I dug out some old pinkie jigs , thinned them out a bit and put on an Uncle Josh pork frog . As the river was high and muddy , I fished shore line related slack water spots . The fish cooperated, I got three smallmouth bass , nice fat chunks . A fitting celebration for such a milestone in my life.
  7. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Chief Grey Bear in Bronze Beast!   
    From the Illinois River in Oklahoma, 21 inch monster smallmouth. 

  8. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to wuteversbitin424 in It's Happening...   
    A friend of mine sent this to me yesterday. I happen to be off all next week for spring break! With the showers we've got Hopefully they'll turn on with the warmer weather. It's still pretty dry though. 

  9. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Flysmallie in Roof racks   
    https://www.walmart.com/ip/44-to-60-Telescoping-Roof-Rack-Cargo-Cross-Bars-150-lb.-Capacity/29390127
     
  10. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Deadstream in Roof racks   
    I think the shop up in Fayetteville has a spring float day. Lets you test drive canoe, kayaks, etc. Might be one closer to you.   It all depends what you want to do with it. Camp&fish, whitewater, family floats.  Lot's of used boats around.  
  11. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Gavin in Roof racks   
    It looks like its been holed through the bottom, and its only 14'...I'd pass.
  12. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Deadstream in Roof racks   
    Test ride!   Some of those boats are tippy! 
  13. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Deadstream in Roof racks   
    For sure. Check out the local aftermarket truck part place, they usually have half a dozen or so brands.
  14. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Flysmallie in Roof racks   
    There are cheaper options out there. Thule and Yakima are the brands to have but there are cheaper options out there. For the past year I've been using racks that I spent a whopping $50 on. But I needed something that was removable. A dozen trips at highway speeds and it's never been a problem. 
  15. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Deadstream in Roof racks   
    What Gavin said.  Plus you can buy accessories like kayak, bike and other carriers.  My canoes are expensive and my truck roof looks much better without canoe dents and slide marks.  I've Beverly Hillbillied boats all over the the NW Ark mountains and it's not worth the headaches.   Have fun.  Nothing better then the Buffalo or the Mulberry first week of April.
  16. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from dan hufferd in It's Happening...   
    They're starting to pop!
  17. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from Johnsfolly in It's Happening...   
    Thanks! Yeah, it's been dry here in NE OK as well. My spots got a couple nice showers last week which helped. If we can get some more rain in the next week with the warmer weather moving in, it's on!
  18. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Johnsfolly in It's Happening...   
    Great find DWS! We definitely need rain and some warmer weather here in mid Missouri before we will find morels. Still you got me thinking about taking some strolls in the woods.
  19. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from Johnsfolly in It's Happening...   
    They're starting to pop!
  20. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from BilletHead in It's Happening...   
    They're starting to pop!
  21. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Chief Grey Bear in Hot fishing on a cool day   
    I haven't posted a report here in some time. I used to post a report weekly, but sort of let that slide over the years. I'm not going to start posting a bunch of reports again, but I thought I would share one for old times sake. 
    At my last High School reunion, I ran into one of my buddies that I haven't had much contact with over the years. We picked up right where we left off. After retiring from the Armed Services, he is now teaching and living in our old home town. And he does a lot of lake fishing. He hadn't been floating much since school. 
    So we've stayed in contact over different subjects and earlier in the week I got a hold of him to see if he had any plans Saturday. It was all clear and a plan was made to meet up. Early Saturday morning just before I was to hit the road, I get a text that he has been violently sick and won't make it. 
    So I fix me a little breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and fried O'Brien style taters. As I sit down to the feast, my brain starts working on what my next move is. 
    My fist thought is to change up my float and have my wife help me with the shuttle. Now where do I want to float now?  I think of a couple but don't get overly excited because it's getting late and they will consume some time to fish properly. 
    Then it hits me. Another friend of mine is always good for a short notice float trip and he just bought a new canoe Thursday. 
    So at 7:30 I send him a text asking what he was doing because my buddy had to back out. Within seconds I get a response that he's floating with me, where was we going. 
    So after a few minutes of discussion, a plan was hatched and it was time to execute. I put my tandem back in the garage and get out the solo and hit the road. 
    I get to our meeting point and in a few minutes I get another text from him. He has had some issues that have set him back about 15 minutes. Not a big deal I'm thinking. I start running through my head how many miles we are about to float and how many hours of daylight are left. It's going to be tight!
    It's now 11:00 and we are finally on the water! It is shaping up to be a more beautiful day than I thought. I thought we would be fighting the wind all day, but that really wasn't the case. And at times it was just dead still!
    We are not on the water more than 15 minutes and lines are tight with rods bent! 
    The fish were spread out everywhere here too just like I have found them the last two or three weeks on other river systems. 
    The water is still so clear that stealth is your best friend. They weren't very spooky but they were not playful if they knew you were in the area. Long casts were the play of the day. 
    Knowing that we had a relatively long float, not by Al's standards, but longer than I normally do in one day, we tried to keep moving. We didn't do very well in keeping with this plan and kept telling each other we had to get moving!
    And that was the hardest part of the day! Keeping moving on. It was just so stinking good, we had to force ourselves to keep going!
    The next thing we knew, there was about three hours of daylight left and about 4 miles to go. Now knowing I have a heavy, slow canoe, and so does JTram, and we still wanted to fish, we had to set a pace and stick to it. 
    Well that didn't happen. Now we have 3 miles to go and about an hour of daylight. And it's not 3 easy miles with the water as low as it is. And now the wind is in our face and pushing us back about as fast as we can go forward! 
    We had predicted early in the trip it would be 6:00 before we got off the water. And now it was looking like it would be later than that! I hope not as I left my glasses in the truck and only had my sunglasses! 
    Paddle, paddle, paddle! It was so hard to paddle right on by so many good spots! The fishing had just got hotter and hotter as the day wore on but we couldn't play along anymore, it had become a race against time! And we were trying not to loose!
    And we didn't! We got to the take out point at exactly 6:00! It was cloudy and there was barley any light left! We had just enough light to get everything loaded! 
    The fish ate a variety of soft plastics. We didn't throw any cranks due to the gin clarity of the water. When it's that clear, I like to stick with soft plastics. 
    We ended the day with 40 fish in about 4 hours of actual fishing. Not a bad outing for early March. By far the majority being smallmouth. Most of them in the 13-15 range. And a few nice largemouth thrown in to keep it interesting. 
    I know it seems impossible to believe with all the recent reports showing up like sponsored infomercials, but not one fish was caught on a hd craw or ned rig. 








  22. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to Johnsfolly in 9/11/2016 Stream Smallie Smackdown   
    DWS
    Sorry that I missed this.post earlier in the year. Sounded like a great trip. Glad you were able to ID the meanmouth. Would love to catch one of them. Congrats on a great multispecies creek trip!
  23. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from Mitch f in 9/11/2016 Stream Smallie Smackdown   
    The company I work for has a mentor program.  I didn't have a preference on a mentor this year so I was randomly paired with a guy from an entirely different area of the business that I would not have likely met otherwise.  The first couple times we met we discovered that we had a mutual obsession for all things hunting and fishing.  About a month ago, we met for lunch and he was showing me pictures from his trip flyfishing for bonefish.  I said that was awesome and proceeded to show him pictures from my stream smallie adventures this summer.  His eyes got big and he said, "Whoa, I love stream fishing for smallies!  Where did you go for that?  I just moved back here a few years ago and have been looking for places like that!"  Now, I am usually highly secretive of the creek data I've accumulated and keep it pretty close to the chest, but after getting to know this guy, I've discovered he's a great person and an ethical outdoorsman. I also learned he is as secretive as me and I learned later that he has some good creeks I didn't know about .  Therefore, I told him that I have a couple places we could wade fish, but I wished I had a canoe to travel down stream to some accesses I've found.  He smiled like a kid in a candy store and said he had a canoe that he could load up and we needed to go! 
    Well, Sunday was the big day.  I met him at 5 a.m. to drive a few hours to our take-out to drop off my car.  He said that at one point his truck said 49 degrees F.  I'd believe it because when we got to our put-in it was pretty chilly.  The creek was running perfect and clear.  We got on the water at sunrise and it was still chilly for this time of year.  The bite was pretty slow for the first hour or so.  Then it started warming up and fishing got red hot.  I'd have a hard fighting smallie on, then he would, or we both would.  This continued on the rest of the morning and we were having so much fun we lost track of time.  We made it down river to where another creek joins in, about a mile or so from our put-in. At this point we had caught 40+ fish.  The other stream was pretty stained from rain a day or two earlier.  It was sad to see the crystal clear stream we started out on turn brown.  It was probably all for the best though because we had another six miles to go and it was already well after 1:00.  We laughed at how much time we spent on the first mile and then hurried our way downstream.  
    We didn't fish much on the rest of the trip, but did manage to catch another 15-20 by trolling and stopping a couple times at spots we just couldn't pass up.  We both agreed that next time we need to spend more time on this lower stretch because we had to pass on some really good looking water.  Luckily, my estimate of how many miles we had to go was right (for awhile I was thinking I greatly underestimated the mileage) and we were off the water by 6:00.  Although we ran out of fishing time, we had a great day.  We achieved the stream bass grand-slam by catching smallmouth, largemouth, spotted bass, and rock bass.  I caught one rock bass the size of my hand.  We also caught various sunfish and I had a huge gar hit a Ned rig right at the boat.  We didn't catch anything real big but plenty of 12-13 inch smallies and my friend caught a nice 14+ incher.  I also caught my first ever mean mouth bass.  Thanks to you OAF guys I could identify it.  Otherwise, I would have just thought it was a really weird looking smallie (sorry, no pic).  All fish were released.  We also saw a lot of other wildlife including a big soft shell turtle, three water moccasins, and three northern water snakes.  It was a fantastic day that will forever be imprinted in my memory.



  24. Like
    Dances With Smallies got a reaction from Johnsfolly in 9/11/2016 Stream Smallie Smackdown   
    The company I work for has a mentor program.  I didn't have a preference on a mentor this year so I was randomly paired with a guy from an entirely different area of the business that I would not have likely met otherwise.  The first couple times we met we discovered that we had a mutual obsession for all things hunting and fishing.  About a month ago, we met for lunch and he was showing me pictures from his trip flyfishing for bonefish.  I said that was awesome and proceeded to show him pictures from my stream smallie adventures this summer.  His eyes got big and he said, "Whoa, I love stream fishing for smallies!  Where did you go for that?  I just moved back here a few years ago and have been looking for places like that!"  Now, I am usually highly secretive of the creek data I've accumulated and keep it pretty close to the chest, but after getting to know this guy, I've discovered he's a great person and an ethical outdoorsman. I also learned he is as secretive as me and I learned later that he has some good creeks I didn't know about .  Therefore, I told him that I have a couple places we could wade fish, but I wished I had a canoe to travel down stream to some accesses I've found.  He smiled like a kid in a candy store and said he had a canoe that he could load up and we needed to go! 
    Well, Sunday was the big day.  I met him at 5 a.m. to drive a few hours to our take-out to drop off my car.  He said that at one point his truck said 49 degrees F.  I'd believe it because when we got to our put-in it was pretty chilly.  The creek was running perfect and clear.  We got on the water at sunrise and it was still chilly for this time of year.  The bite was pretty slow for the first hour or so.  Then it started warming up and fishing got red hot.  I'd have a hard fighting smallie on, then he would, or we both would.  This continued on the rest of the morning and we were having so much fun we lost track of time.  We made it down river to where another creek joins in, about a mile or so from our put-in. At this point we had caught 40+ fish.  The other stream was pretty stained from rain a day or two earlier.  It was sad to see the crystal clear stream we started out on turn brown.  It was probably all for the best though because we had another six miles to go and it was already well after 1:00.  We laughed at how much time we spent on the first mile and then hurried our way downstream.  
    We didn't fish much on the rest of the trip, but did manage to catch another 15-20 by trolling and stopping a couple times at spots we just couldn't pass up.  We both agreed that next time we need to spend more time on this lower stretch because we had to pass on some really good looking water.  Luckily, my estimate of how many miles we had to go was right (for awhile I was thinking I greatly underestimated the mileage) and we were off the water by 6:00.  Although we ran out of fishing time, we had a great day.  We achieved the stream bass grand-slam by catching smallmouth, largemouth, spotted bass, and rock bass.  I caught one rock bass the size of my hand.  We also caught various sunfish and I had a huge gar hit a Ned rig right at the boat.  We didn't catch anything real big but plenty of 12-13 inch smallies and my friend caught a nice 14+ incher.  I also caught my first ever mean mouth bass.  Thanks to you OAF guys I could identify it.  Otherwise, I would have just thought it was a really weird looking smallie (sorry, no pic).  All fish were released.  We also saw a lot of other wildlife including a big soft shell turtle, three water moccasins, and three northern water snakes.  It was a fantastic day that will forever be imprinted in my memory.



  25. Like
    Dances With Smallies reacted to moturkey in Nice Chunker   
    The wind made it tough paddling upstream today, but I didn't have to go too far to find a nice hole. Found a couple spots, a big drum and this dandy today, all on the HD craw. 18.5" and a belly like a sumo wrestler. I wish I had a scale on me.
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