Finally....

[Al Agnew]

It's been a tough year for fishing so far. I've gone fewer times than I can remember, since every time I could go, the rivers were all blown out from all the rain. The few times I've gone, it's been high, murky, and dropping, which usually makes for slow fishing. So while I've had a couple of average days, most have been below average.

I was already planning on floating a certain creek today, but last night my wife and I stopped off at the local Chinese restaurant, and after the meal I opened up my fortune cookie. It said, "If you go fishing, your catch will be plentiful".

The creek is an often-floated one, but I was going farther up than the usual floaters go. It's very clear up there, pretty fast, lots of gravel, not many good deep pools but lots of downed trees with nice pockets around them and plenty of moderately deep runs. It had plenty of water to float, which is very unusual for this time of year, but not so much water I couldn't slow myself down to fish. The action started off somewhat slow, with fish hitting but most of them pretty small. I was planning on doing a lot of topwater fishing, and also had a buzzbait on one rod, and the first decent fish came on the buzzbait. It would be the only buzzbait fish all day. Topwater wasn't doing much, but my homemade twin spin began to produce. I switched to one of my homemade small wooden walk the dog topwaters, and the action got a little faster. Including two fish at once:

It was a long float, close to 14 miles. I could have shortened it, but with the water flowing as strongly as it was I knew I could just keep drifting and casting and cover the water in plenty of time to get off the creek before dark. I passed the first intermediate access and the fishing started to pick up, with somewhat nicer fish. Instead of 10 inchers, I started getting some 12-14 inchers. But when I passed the second intermediate access, all of a sudden I started seeing some big fish. I had two 18-19 inchers come out from under an overhanging, leafy tree and chase the topwater until they saw the canoe. Then in the same pool, I got the biggest fish of the day, this fat 18 incher:

The fish weren't in deep water. They were really using overhead cover, and I kept seeing big ones come out and chase the twin spin. On a whim, I put on one of my homemade crankbaits. I usually don't throw it in really clear water, but I had a feeling they might want it, with the cloud cover that had moved in and the fast water. Sure enough, at times it produced very well, and I had a couple more big ones chase it. I caught a 17 incher on the twin spin. Then I saw another canoe ahead of me, with two guys out in the creek fishing. I passed them, somewhat surprised that I'd done as well as I had fishing behind them. And the fishing actually got a little slower after I passed them. I stopped to drink some Gatorade, and let them pass me again, but then they stopped at another good spot, and I passed them for the last time...and immediately came upon another angler wading. He had a stringer of sunfish.

After that the fishing was hit and miss. Some places that seemed to be good had very little, other spots had lots of fish. But overall, most of the spots that looked like they would be great were not all that good, but much of the water that looked marginal was full of fish, and I continued to see big ones come out to investigate my lures, but they seemed to always see the canoe just before they made up their minds to take it.

One interesting thing I did today that I'd never done before...I counted not only the fish I caught (although by "caught", I included little ones that I shook off the hooks at the canoe without touching them) but also the strikes I got from fish that I could tell were bass of 10 inches or better (more or less--but in the clear water I could usually see the fish well when they struck). My final tally was 84 bass caught, and another 103 strikes that missed or were only briefly hooked. Most of these were fairly small fish that tried to take the rather large lures I was using, but there were a few very good fish in among them. In the end, the fish I caught were about evenly divided between the little wooden walk the dog topwater, my twin spin, and my homemade crankbait. It was a fun day.

[Mitch f]

Nice report, I hope you didn't go where I'm going tomorrow ?

[Old plug]

That plug looks like some of mine. i make mine out of cedar and do bot paint them either. None are all spin type with 2 " blades on them. My daughter recently gave me some sasafass. Never ised that before but I will be blocking it out in the shop as soon as we get some cooler weather. Then with probalbly turn it on a lathe .