Summer on the river

[top_dollar]

        I fished saturday with my son as i do most weekends in the summer.  I cant take the summer heat so i like to wade creeks and swim until fall and winter. 

         We mostly played construction toys on a gravel bar and looked for crawdads and minnows , but he has some skills with a spinning rod, and has been addicted to the tug for a while  now.  We got a few smallies, lm, longears, and rock bass.  Nothing bigger than 13inches.  Although i have caught smallies up to 19inches there, they are exceedingly uncommon in my experiences.

        We were on the upper section of the river above leadwood, mostly clear water 1-4 feet deep with some deeper holes to 8 maybe 10 feet.  My typical setup (for me and the boy) is a 5ft 6inch med light spinning rod with 4# mono.  I attach a 1/16 oz no collar ball head jig with #2 owner that my brother pours for me.  The business end gets either  a 2.5-3 inch swing impact minnow,  a 4 inch chompers drop shot worm (lately the biospawn plasmatail has been getting the call), or the last 2.5 inches of a baby brush hog.  Usually the swing impact or garlic worm (what the boy calls the chompers worm) works the best.   Fishing is normally really good for numbers of small fish.  The boy by himself can usually manage a couple of fish in the hour attention span he has.  He caught the big fish from saturday about a 12 inch smallie, on the "garlic worm"

[top_dollar]

I cant upload pics, it keeps saying upload failed.  darn it all.

[snagged in outlet 3]

Email them to yourself and when it asked you the size choose the smallest.  Then save them in the smaller size and upload those pictures.

[Johnsfolly]

1 hour ago, top_dollar said:

I cant upload pics, it keeps saying upload failed.  darn it all.

Top_dollar - try what SIO3 mentioned and see if that helps.

I often cannot upload directly from my phone due to the picture size. So I download the photos to my laptop and resave them, which makes them smaller size and then I can upload into OAF. If you can afford one, a pocket digital camera usually takes great photos at a smaller size. Lots of threads on OAF about cameras. Ours is an older Olympus Stylus Tough that is drop resistant and waterproof (at least for the water that I typically fish). I find this perfect for a wading camera. The photos are typically 1/2 to 1/3 the file size as those with my phone.

[Flysmallie]

There are a lot of different phone apps available for resizing images. Image Resizer is one that seems to work pretty well but there are others available. Most of which are free to use. 

[top_dollar]

[top_dollar]

[top_dollar]

It worked! Thanks.

[Johnsfolly]

Awesome photos! Glad you were able to upload them. Congrats on a great trip with your son!

[top_dollar]

I snuck down to river yesterday about 530 til dark.  Its extremely low.  My favorite spot to wade is a little stretch maybe 200 yeards long.  It has 3 little riffles that now are little more than ankle deep.  Each has a nice little scoured out pool maybe 4-8feet deep with debris and good current.  I always sneak to the most downstream pool and quietly wade upstream against the current.  I have found that i catch 2-3x more fish wading upstream.  As i move to the last riffle it quickly gets too deep to wade.  Fortunately i am able to scurry up the bank and walk along the bluffs.  

       Fishing this way is quite a bit like hunting.  The quieter i am the better i do.  One technique i use is to move to the spot where i want to be and stand without moving or casting for as long as i can stand it.  Normally after a few minutes all the little river minnows are swimming around your legs like nothing happened.  It feels like hunting to me cuz when you walk through the woods everything hides, but if you sit down and shut up for 20 minutes the woods comes alive.  

This evening i stuck with the jig worm and a jerkbait.  My first cast with the worm into a swampy looking pocket produced a lm less than 10 inches.  Then another 30 minutes without a fish.  Switched over to the jerkbait.  First cast, crushed...another largemouth.  This one bigger maybe 13 or 14 inches.  I was worried though as the worm got me a first cast bite then nothing.  That was not the case here though as the jerkbait caught me 8 bass before dark and of course 1 overzealous longear.  1 smallie was about 17inches, but skinny.  The rest were 8-13 inchers.