Finally Some Relief From The Wife And Kids

[Smalliebigs]

Well my buddy and I had to plan this trip weeks in advance and it still almost didn't happen. My buddy Paul and I are still making adjustments to our new lifestyles as dads....we both love being dads but, we were both avid river fishing freaks prior to kids and a trip like this could have been taken on a moments whim before he had a beautiful 8 month old boy introduced into his life and me with a three year old raging girl. It is what it is when you try to cater to your wife and especially little kids the best you can.

So let me also start off by appologizing to Paul as I did him wrong like I did Mike wrong the prior weekend and over slept???? I can't believe I did that again, luckily Paul hung around in my driveway for me to get up like a stupid butt. The weather conditions were not ideal and we figured we needed to go North because of rain to the South. so we set out for a fork of a river north of HWY 44. We had both fished once in the past and didn't catch much bigger than 13 inches, so we we not looking for huge fish but, we were pleasantly suprised. We saw the high Gar content of this river last time and Paul had made a few suprises for them the night before, in an attempt to nail a few gar if the bass didn't feel like playing.

We really didn't have great numbers and the fish were taking baits in unusal ways. We fished our typical topwater which produced some really wild strikes, the fish seemed to be following the bait all the way across the river to only decide at the last moment to smash the bait at your footsetps basicly. Paul summed it up pretty good in saying it was like fishing for a Jack in the box.....you would keep working the bait over to you waiting on a strike and when you would get your bait close enough to you where you would nornally pull it out of the water or give up esentially.....BAM!!!!! they would just crush it at you feet praticly and scare the crap out of you. It was heart pounding and I give Paul credit for recognizing the fish were doing that....I think I would have caught even less fish than I did without completely finishing my cast off and working those baits ALL the way back to me.

We caught some nice fish from 12 to 15 inches

and then Paul coaxed this Bronze beauty

[Smalliebigs]

adding to report as the new camera has more mega pixles and I was cut off above.....it was a great day on the water with a dear friend....just watching him tear up fish on topwater was worth it for me....I know he needed that 18+ bad as the rain gods have not been kind to him all summer ....now we need to get the Coosas out somewhere sooner than later Paul.

Paul tied up some Gar rigs the night before here is a look at those

and they produced

[Old plug]

I just started to fish for gar this past month. Here on LOZ they are all over the place and they are not small. I caught one by accident on a plastic worm and noted on here that they were caught on flies. It got me interested. I paid a visit to Fishenwrench and that got me started. I have a spot up in my cove about 3/4, a mike from here where they roll in the evenings. If nothing else I go up there and catch a couple. I caught only one small one up there. All the rest have been a uniform size around 42". The largest I caught was 4ft. They are a thrill to catch but kind of nasty to handle in the confines of a deep V boat. I make the rope lures for myself. With the ones I have been catching here the lure will be about destroyed after the second fish.

[Old plug]

This is some gar stuff i made the other night

[Old plug]

Wont up,oad from the IPad

[Smalliebigs]

Old Plug, I know Wrenchie is a Gar freak.....he likes the Temperates too. I just have never been into the gar....if you ever get a chance on an Alligator Gar??? do it, those are fun....the spotted gar are beautiful and I totally respect them as a native species to Missouri but, they freak me out for some reason....I always like to see them though and have no problems with them....and to see Paul nail them on a rig he just tied was cool as hell.

It was also fun to see a nice smallie from north of HWY 44....the gar were just a side note of beauty

[Old plug]

Well it should work this time. I have known wrench for 20 yrs. i only found out he fished for gar last month. I wrote him and said I seen on here where some guy caught them on a fly rod. I am not a fly rodder anymore. I looked at the stuff he made and came home and made my own for bait casting. Yeah spotted gar have a nasty nasty set of choppers. You can injure yourself just picking even a dead one up wrong. These are my own concoctions.

[MOsmallies]

Yeah Scott and I had a great time! It was definitely a strange bite. We caught fish on WTD baits, poppers, flukes, and creature baits. The topwater was one of the strangest bites I've ever seen. We would literally make 50+ foot casts and we wouldn't get hit for the first 45 feet of the retrieve. Then, right before you were ready to reel up for another cast they would destroy it with reckless abandon. Some of the hardest and fiercest strikes I've ever experienced. I credit KVD Mustad hooks and a properly set drag for landing that 18". I had two almost identical strikes just before I caught that big one. And I had two more after it. The first one after it, I actually had two largemouth hit it at them same time and both got hooked. One got off during the fight though. The second big hit after 18" was from a 15-16" smallie that literally missed the lure, but came completely out of the water. Literally like a great white breaching on a seal (just in time for shark week). Here's one more pic of it. Just a fat, thick, healthy smallie!

In regards to the gar.... This was something I'd been wanting to try for a while but just never gotten around to it. Old Plug... All your info and reports on the LOZ forum actually got me to give it a shot this weekend and it worked on at least one. It was pretty cool to say the least. Your rope flies/lures look killer. I have some tweaking to do to mine. They need a little more weight for casting distance. I also like your swivel line tie as opposed to the split ring I used. We actually caught a few more, but they were on topwater. It's funny to think I was pumped when I caught one on my rope lure, but pissed when one hooked itself on my Megabass topwater. I will say, the one hooked on my rope lure was the worst fighting fish ever. It literally just reeled in like a log. Maybe the bigger ones fight better. On a side note, I sent that gar pic to a buddy that doesn't fish and he said "that's the biggest, ugliest worm he's ever seen".... I got a kick out of that. I think they're really cool looking especially with all the spots.

Paul

MOsmallies

[Gavin]

Good for you guys...Headed to the St. Croix near Grantsburg, WI for a 4 day float in the AM....cant wait.

[cnr]

Great trip report. I need to get out more!