Still in a slump

[Al Agnew]

I'm not superstitious, but after yesterday maybe I should be.  I had run about 9 miles up middle Big River in the jetboat, and stopped right below a riffle that is usually a split channel around a massive water willow bed, but with the water as high as it was, it was simply one wide riffle.  For some reason, in normal water there are often several fish in the swirling current where the two channels come back together, out in the middle of the river, while it's a relatively rare occurence to find fish in the middle of the channel, in warm weather at least, on this part of Big River.  I had pulled over against the bank to rig up my rods, and after I tied my homemade crankbait on, I just cast it out into the middle of the river to check to make sure it was running straight and my reel was set right.  About halfway back to the boat, I got a hard strike, and reeled in a fat 16 inch smallmouth.  On the first cast.

Several things came to mind.  Is it going to be a great day since that fish hit in the same place they would be in the summer?  Water temp was 56 degrees, not quite "warm".  Are there going to be a lot of fish off the banks?  Water was murky, visibility about 2 feet, and dropping, which often puts them well off the banks and tough to catch.  And I have to admit I thought about the superstition about catching a fish on the first cast.

I drifted and fished.  And after an hour or so, I was thinking a lot more about that superstition.  By that time I'd tried deep diving crankbaits off the banks and on current seams, my shallow crank on every conceivable bank the fish could be, two different spinnerbaits, Mitch's craw, and topwater...with zero to show for it.  After another hour, I felt absolutely sure I'd eliminated just about all the possibilities of where the fish were hanging out.  I hadn't tried everything in my tackle box, I guess, but I'd tried all the lures I had any confidence in, in all the places they should have worked.  

After another hour I had fished a good pool, one that always produces fish both in summer and winter, so thoroughly, in every part of it, that I was certain that if there were fish in it that were active enough to strike I would have found them.  By that time, I'd caught a few fish, including a 16 inch largemouth, but there was no pattern whatsoever.  One small smallie came from fast water.  One lone spotted bass came off a log on the opposite side of the pool from the deep water and rocks.  One 14 inch smallmouth came on Mitch's craw in deep water.

Usually, even on a slow day, you catch enough small fish to keep yourself alert and ready for a bigger one to hit.  But by mid-afternoon, I was no longer fishing with mindfulness.  The only reason I kept fishing was that there was still water in front of me to fish.  I found one pod of smallmouth, finally, at the mouth of a tributary, by missing two hard strikes on a spinnerbait.  I picked up Mitch's craw and immediately hooked the best fish of the day; it looked to be about 17 inches, but came off at the boat.  And then I caught two 14 inchers.  I fished a little more carefully down the bank below, hoping for more fish staging to go up the tributary.  Nothing.  

I had planned to never start the motor after that initial run, fishing all the way back to the ramp.  But I still had a mile and a half to go, it was 5 PM, and I had no confidence whatsoever that I was going to suddenly figure out the fish.  So I quit.

Some days they just don't hit on this part of the river.  I've had days like this in the past, in fact even worse days, but I could count them on the fingers of one hand.  I didn't count the number of fish I caught, but it was surely less than 15.  The 16 inch smallmouth at the beginning, the 16 inch largemouth, a 15 inch smallmouth, and three other bass around 13-14 inches...well, if the season was open and I'd been keeping fish that would have been a nice limit.  But when you pound the water as hard as I did trying to figure them out, it didn't seem like much to show for it.

 

[Mitch f]

The Spring is fickle for sure, feast or famine sometimes. Kind of like the winter, it seems. I'm thinking the fish will spawn this next full moon if this weather keeps up.

[Hog Wally]

Meramec was 63 degrees yesterday evening.  Some smallies were definitely in the right places for bedded fish   I'm just not sure what's going on   

[Al Agnew]

Big River got up to exactly 60 degrees.  I didn't hit classic spawning banks except with the spinnerbait and crankbait, nothing happening on them.  Water was still high enough that the current was strong just about everywhere, including a lot of banks I know the smallies spawn on.  I agree, Mitch, they should start spawning with the next full moon for sure, just hope for stable water conditions for a while.

This stretch of river has a lot of spotted bass, but I only caught one spot and one hybrid.  You can almost always catch spots even when the other bass aren't doing much, but not yesterday.

 

[Brian Jones]

If it's any consolation, today (Saturday) wasn't any better.  Two of us caught maybe 8 "keepers" and only two of them were smallmouth.  Biggest of the day was a two pound largemouth.  Water temp was almost 59 when we put in and almost 63 when we took out at 2:00  Made it home in time to take a round in the mushroom woods. Fortunately it was much better than the fishing......................