Hot fishing on a cool day

[Chief Grey Bear]

I haven't posted a report here in some time. I used to post a report weekly, but sort of let that slide over the years. I'm not going to start posting a bunch of reports again, but I thought I would share one for old times sake. 

At my last High School reunion, I ran into one of my buddies that I haven't had much contact with over the years. We picked up right where we left off. After retiring from the Armed Services, he is now teaching and living in our old home town. And he does a lot of lake fishing. He hadn't been floating much since school. 

So we've stayed in contact over different subjects and earlier in the week I got a hold of him to see if he had any plans Saturday. It was all clear and a plan was made to meet up. Early Saturday morning just before I was to hit the road, I get a text that he has been violently sick and won't make it. 

So I fix me a little breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and fried O'Brien style taters. As I sit down to the feast, my brain starts working on what my next move is. 

My fist thought is to change up my float and have my wife help me with the shuttle. Now where do I want to float now?  I think of a couple but don't get overly excited because it's getting late and they will consume some time to fish properly. 

Then it hits me. Another friend of mine is always good for a short notice float trip and he just bought a new canoe Thursday. 
So at 7:30 I send him a text asking what he was doing because my buddy had to back out. Within seconds I get a response that he's floating with me, where was we going. 

So after a few minutes of discussion, a plan was hatched and it was time to execute. I put my tandem back in the garage and get out the solo and hit the road. 

I get to our meeting point and in a few minutes I get another text from him. He has had some issues that have set him back about 15 minutes. Not a big deal I'm thinking. I start running through my head how many miles we are about to float and how many hours of daylight are left. It's going to be tight!

It's now 11:00 and we are finally on the water! It is shaping up to be a more beautiful day than I thought. I thought we would be fighting the wind all day, but that really wasn't the case. And at times it was just dead still!

We are not on the water more than 15 minutes and lines are tight with rods bent! 
The fish were spread out everywhere here too just like I have found them the last two or three weeks on other river systems. 

The water is still so clear that stealth is your best friend. They weren't very spooky but they were not playful if they knew you were in the area. Long casts were the play of the day. 

Knowing that we had a relatively long float, not by Al's standards, but longer than I normally do in one day, we tried to keep moving. We didn't do very well in keeping with this plan and kept telling each other we had to get moving!

And that was the hardest part of the day! Keeping moving on. It was just so stinking good, we had to force ourselves to keep going!

The next thing we knew, there was about three hours of daylight left and about 4 miles to go. Now knowing I have a heavy, slow canoe, and so does JTram, and we still wanted to fish, we had to set a pace and stick to it. 

Well that didn't happen. Now we have 3 miles to go and about an hour of daylight. And it's not 3 easy miles with the water as low as it is. And now the wind is in our face and pushing us back about as fast as we can go forward! 

We had predicted early in the trip it would be 6:00 before we got off the water. And now it was looking like it would be later than that! I hope not as I left my glasses in the truck and only had my sunglasses! 

Paddle, paddle, paddle! It was so hard to paddle right on by so many good spots! The fishing had just got hotter and hotter as the day wore on but we couldn't play along anymore, it had become a race against time! And we were trying not to loose!

And we didn't! We got to the take out point at exactly 6:00! It was cloudy and there was barley any light left! We had just enough light to get everything loaded! 

The fish ate a variety of soft plastics. We didn't throw any cranks due to the gin clarity of the water. When it's that clear, I like to stick with soft plastics. 

We ended the day with 40 fish in about 4 hours of actual fishing. Not a bad outing for early March. By far the majority being smallmouth. Most of them in the 13-15 range. And a few nice largemouth thrown in to keep it interesting. 

I know it seems impossible to believe with all the recent reports showing up like sponsored infomercials, but not one fish was caught on a hd craw or ned rig. 

[fishinwrench]

Excellent!

[Johnsfolly]

Great report chief! Thise are some nice fish! Congrats again!

[jtram]

It was rough at the end!!!

[KCRIVERRAT]

Great day on the water for early March guys. I can't believe you did so well without throwing the hi def craws or nerd rigs. Kudos man!

[Chief Grey Bear]

59 minutes ago, jtram said:

It was rough at the end!!!

Those were not even picture worthy! 

[Flysmallie]

1 minute ago, Chief Grey Bear said:

Those were not even picture worthy! 

Every fish is picture worthy. 

[ollie]

I wondered why you were taking minnows for pictures!  lol  looks like a great day on the Elk.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Well we didn't have you to guide to the big fish. So we just plunked around and did the best we could.

[Johnsfolly]

17 hours ago, Flysmallie said:

Every fish is picture worthy. 

Spoken from a guy that takes a lot of picture worthy fish ! I also take a lot of picture worthy fish.

 

1 hour ago, ollie said:

I wondered why you were taking minnows for pictures!

I happen to like taking photos of minnows!