Fishing Report 24 and 25 July

[Brian Sloss]

Although this is posted under Brian's login name, it is being written by his business partner Ryan Griffin.

On Monday I guided a Columbia gentleman and a Springfield gentleman (Tom and Byron) on a trip from Whitten down to Riverton. We were targeting smallies but as I will expound on later, we ended up with quite a mixed bag of species. We got the drift boat in the water around 7:30 and despite a recent trout stocking by MDC we had a pretty slow first hour with only one smallmouth landed by Byron. Instead of going into despair we dug deeper into the tackleboxes and mixed up lures and colors. About 9:30 the fishing picked up and stayed very steady the rest of the day. It was a bit of an odd day in that in many areas that looked suited to smallmouth we would pick up a trout, and many 'trouty' runs were producing smallies. I hope this didn't make the boys lose confidence in their guide! The best lures for the day were mid-level and deep diving Rapala shads thrown by Tom and Byron had luck with a 1/4 oz jig with twin tail 4" green pumkin grub. Both men caught fish on Rebel Crawdads with the "Cajun" color being the most effective. Byron also had a good smallie on a top water plug pulled through a small riffle.

Though we didn't keep a precise count we tallied around 45 total fish including 2 chain pickerel (the one species that was where it was supposed to be all day: slow water with weeds), 6-9 trout including a 16-17 incher that Tom picked up as I cooked lunch, 10-12 goggle eye with a couple being or close to keeper length of 8", and 22-26 smallies. The smallmouth were almost all in the 12-15" range with a few under and at least two over the 15" minimum length to keep. All the fish were returned safely to the water although a few were immortalized on film next to the smiling faces of Tom and Byron.

Byron was busy on Tuesday so Tom and I hit the lower river from Riverton to 142 (The Narrows). Like Monday the day started slow and unfortunately it stayed that way. Tom ended up with 15 or 16 fish but there was no real 'hot streak' other than 3 smallies in a row after lunch that fell to a purple smoke grub yanked along downed trees. The shads picked up a few fish as did the crawdads but nothing was consistently working and we spent quite a bit of time changing lures. Tom again had a three species day (smallie, trout goggle-eye) but the smallmouth were noticably smaller with many in the 8-10" range. Although not usually thought of as trout water, we did pick up two rainbows with one being over 2 miles below the 160 bridge. I would guess that the small flood we had a couple of weeks ago may have pushed them downstream and they have yet to make it back up.

All in all, they were two good days of fishing and I enjoyed the company of Tom and Byron. We hope to see them on the river again soon.