Good might be an understatement

[Al Agnew]

 

The next time Mitch is deciding whether to go on a float trip with me, he may grill me a little more on how far it is.  Or as my wife Mary told him...ALL of my float trips are at least one mile too long.  But the thing is, I don't seem to get on the river often enough, and when I do I want to squeeze in as much fishing as possible.  You see, it was like this:  there are four accesses to this stretch of river.  The first access above the take-out makes for a 9 mile float, the next access adds one mile, the uppermost access makes the whole thing a good 14 miles.  Ordinarily 14 miles is a lot of river to cover even for me, but the last four miles above the take-out is really crummy water.  So if we had done the 9 mile float or the 10 mile float, we would have only had 5 or 6 miles of good fishing water.  That's just not enough for me.  So although I asked Mitch beforehand if he wanted to do the shorter floats, I think he knew I was all for the marathon deal, and he agreed.  I told him we would just paddle through the last four miles, anyway.  Which might have happened, except the fishing was so good that even the crummy last stretch kept producing fish, so we kept fishing.  It turned into a float of nearly 12 hours.  But you just can't stop when the fish are absolutely tearing up topwaters.  Or I can't, at least, and Mitch DID keep fishing, too, until it started getting dark on us.

The fishing actually started off a little slowly; although we caught three fish in the pool at the put-in, the first couple of miles was hit and miss, with more miss than hit.  I had decided I wasn't going to count the fish this trip, so I don't really know how many we caught in that first few miles, but I thought it was slow, anyway.  We were trying lots of stuff and most everything was working now and then, but not consistently.  Even Mitch's crawdad pours were not doing much.  But of all the stuff we were trying, the fish were hitting topwaters about as well as anything, so we finally just started fishing mostly topwaters.  I was using a Sexy Dawg Jr. for a while, but Mitch was using something different, a lure that I will not name, because Mitch told me that the person who turned him on to it told him to keep it quiet.  Oh sure, you think, a secret lure.  Well, I've always kinda thought that walk the dog topwaters are pretty much interchangeable most days.  Size might make a difference sometimes, color very seldom, differences in action and rattles might make some tweaking worthwhile.  But this lure has a couple of twists that made it pure magic on this day, and perhaps on a lot of days, twists that I may incorporate into some of my homemade walk the dog lures.  The biggest twist was, when a bass hit the thing it almost always got itself hooked.  On the typical walk the dog lures, there are many days when you won't hook half the fish that blow up on it.  But with this one, the percentage was closer to 90%.  And, the fish either really wanted to kill this thing or they really wanted to eat it, I'm not sure which.

The problem, from my point of view, is that Mitch only had one of these lures with him.  After trying a couple different WTD lures in my box and watching him catch fish after fish, I finally broke down and asked him if he had any more of those things.  He acted like he was sorry he didn't.  I'm not sure I'm buying that

Oh, don't get me wrong, I was catching plenty of fish on my WTD lures, especially after I put a big one on that came a little closer to matching the size of his, at least.  But I was missing half the fish that hit mine, and they weren't hitting it as well to begin with.  Sure, I was in the back of the canoe, but we had gotten into a rhythm where Mitch would cast, and by the time he had almost finished his retrieve I would cast 5-10 feet farther along the bank, and then he would repeat.  So we were both fishing "virgin" water with each cast.  There was just enough water flowing in the river and there was very little wind all day, so although I was also doing all the canoe handling, I was able to get in plenty of quality casts.

And indeed, I ended up catching the two biggest fish of the day, this long, lean, broad tailed old 20 incher, and a 17 inch spotted bass that was as thick as it was long (almost).

But I'm sure Mitch caught a lot more fish than I did.  Still, I gotta say that I caught plenty.  I should have been counting.  I'm sure we caught well over a hundred between the two of us, and a lot of them were better than 12 inches, even the spotted bass. 

It was nice to show Mitch one of the stretches of my "home river", the river I grew up fishing.  The one slightly sour note was the number of spotted bass.  We caught far more spots than smallmouth or largemouth, which has not been the case in this stretch in the recent past.  Usually the smallies outnumber the spots, though some days they are fairly close to equal in number caught.  I suspect that, with all the high water we've had this year, spotted bass moved up from the lower river, where they are almost the only species, into this upper stretch in droves.  We didn't catch any other really notable smallies; a couple that pushed 16 inches and a number in the 14-15 inch class.  And the big largemouth that are occasionally found in this stretch didn't want to play, either; I think the biggest largemouth we caught was maybe 15 inches.  Other than the big smallmouth I caught, it was simply a day for numbers of fish that all hit viciously.

You just don't get many days like this.  Blue skies, comfortable temperatures, little wind, no other anglers (well, except for one guy we saw downstream who was wading and fishing, and who, when he saw us, headed immediately to the bank and disappeared in the brush, very suspiciously.  Hmm...), enough water that we didn't have to get out and drag much (though there were a couple of trees down and blocking the channel, necessitating short portages around them across gravel bars), and the fish hitting topwaters with wild abandon.

It was so good I wanted to do it again today...but my wrist is so sore from working walk the dog lures all day that I don't think I could do it.

 

[cnr]

Nice. Beautiful weather and a top water bite. It doesn't get any better than that. A 20" kicker just tops it off too..

[Smalliebigs]

Sweet Report!!! with pics.....yes!!!

  I talked to Mitch and you guys floated what I like to call the forgotten zone. I went thru there a few years back, at least the lower half of your float and it was the same thing....lots of Spots.......such a bummer. My dad kept as many as his greedy fish filleting butt could carry. I won't tell you what I do to them.

 

    The "secret bait" is a fish caller for sure......I have several coming in the mail that Mitch and I had painted. It is sooo cool that you took Mitch on such an adventure, not many get to do that float.....Kudos my friend Mitch said you are the most relentless fisherman he has ever fished with.....I can relate to why you are like that.....I think it's awesome you are ready to get right back out there with bloody thumbs and tennis elbow in your wrists and forearms from chucking and working baits like that for 14 miles....I would be the same way.....It's funny the way we replenish our souls. 

[Jerry Rapp]

great read, thanks Al.

[drew03cmc]

 Those types of stretches are the ones memories are forged out of. The sweat and beers it must've taken to endure 14 miles of chunking and winding is impressive to say the least. 

[Guest]

Sounds like a great day!   

[LittleRedFisherman]

Awesome!!

 

[Gavin]

Glad you had a Great Day! Gotta love it when they are in the mood to eat all day long! Makes up for all the times you go when they have lockjaw.

[moguy1973]

I'm jealous that you guys have time during the week to do a fishing trip like that.  I can't even get out after work anymore to go to the park to go fishing during the week, much less do a 14 mile float.

[joeD]

Hmm. Mitch had the special lure but you caught the biggest fish. Is there a lesson here?

Naw.

!4 miles? My butt hurts thinking about it! Well done fellas.