The Fish Were Biting

[yaknar]

I got out on Monday even though the river was a little higher and faster than I would have liked, but the worst part was the wind, a lot of paddling while the wind was trying to blow me upstream. But who can complain when it was a beautiful day and the fish were biting. I started out with the right lures on my rods and didnt change them the rest of the way down the river. The only two lures I used was a shallow and a deep crankbait. The big fish wanted it deep, and in the current they put up a good fight, and the rockbass and small smallmouth wanted it shallow. I now have a green kayak.I got tired of patching my yellow one. Someone told a while back my yellow kayak scared the fish away, although I never had a problem catching fish out of it. It was a great day on the river and they were all released. Now here's some pictures of a few....

[MNtransplant]

Man those are some beautiful smallies! What a blast...any advice on where to target some from the shore?? No boat..

[ollie]

Nice! Great report and those are some toads from looking at the pics.

[yaknar]

ollie, thanks for the comment.....MNtransplant, when I first moved down here I tried fishing from the banks or fishing around an access, didnt catch many fish. Not to offend anyone. I'm sure there are a lot of anglers that enjoys bank fishing but my advice is to buy a canoe, kayak or rent a canoe from one of the canoe rental places on the river.

[Seth Clarkson]

Awesome fish Yaknar! What was the water clarity like? My Friday trip wasn't great and I'm sure a lot of that had to do with the weather and speed of the river, but the water clarity was less than a foot for sure, maybe closer to 6 inches at that time from all the rain. 

[yaknar]

Seth, the river conditions sounds a lot like what you had...even with the wind. I did the same float too.

[Seth Clarkson]

20 hours ago, yaknar said:

Seth, the river conditions sounds a lot like what you had...even with the wind. I did the same float too.

I need to get more confident with a crankbait for sure, but with how fast the water was there didn't seem to be many places it could be thrown especially in deeper water. Did you throw out into the channel and reel back to the bank? 

[Flysmallie]

14 minutes ago, Seth Clarkson said:

I need to get more confident with a crankbait for sure, but with how fast the water was there didn't seem to be many places it could be thrown

You might be surprised with how fast of water you can catch a fish out of on a crankbait. 

[Seth Clarkson]

4 hours ago, Flysmallie said:

You might be surprised with how fast of water you can catch a fish out of on a crankbait. 

I was meaning more in terms of while keeping the kayak where I want it and effectively retrieving the crank bait without having to just reel it in before having to adjust with my paddle. I didn't feel comfortable if I did hook a decent fish fighting it while being turned around in a lot of areas with the water how it was. I won't know until it happens how it will go, but for now I haven't got that experience to know.