Long and eventful day

[Al Agnew]

So I floated one of my favorite stretches yesterday.  Got a shuttle from Jason Wolfe, and he gave me a couple lures a buddy of his paints to try out.  They were flat-sided Whopper Plopper types, and very well painted.  Now I'm not a big fan of Whopper Ploppers.  I've tried them now and then, but find the actual Ploppers to be a bit frustrating to use.  They don't immediately stay on the surface, and you have to lift your rod high and reel for a couple feet before they "plane" and sputter the way they are supposed to.  And they are picky about rolling and twisting your line if the wire isn't perfectly straight.  And I've used them quite a bit on days when the fish were hitting topwaters well and just eating up my usual walk the dog lures, and the ploppers never produced as well.  So I tossed Jason's gifts into the box and thought I probably wouldn't try them on this day, at least.

When I'm on this stretch, which I've floated hundreds of times over the years, I can pretty well tell you where I'm going to catch fish, almost down to the exact casts.  And I can predict from fishing the first two pools whether the morning and maybe the whole day is going to be good or not.  First pool...the sweet spot is on the downstream end, where the bank switches from rock to alluvial and the current just starts to pick up.  I might catch a fish in the rocks before that point, but if I don't catch one on that short stretch of alluvial bank, I am disappointed.  Second pool...this one has shaly rock, and there is a little point where the rocks stick farther off the bank.  I'm almost certain I'll catch a decent fish there.  If I don't, I know it's going to be a tough morning.

I got nothing, either place.

I also get kinda stuck in a rut in these first few pools.  I know exactly what I'm going to throw.  The first pool, I'm fishing my homemade crankbait.  I pick up the spinnerbait rod for the faster water between the two pools, and then the walk the dog topwater when I hit the second pool.  Since I didn't get anything with the topwater, I went back to the crankbait and spinnerbait for the next quarter mile.  I caught a really nice largemouth, about 18 inches, on the crankbait and a few little ones, but things were slower than I thought they should be.  And that's when I thought, what the heck, I'll try one of Jason's ploppers.  

First of all, I REALLY liked it.  It didn't roll and it didn't sink when it landed.  And for the next two hours the thing was a fish catching machine.  At the end of that two hour period, I'd boated 30 bass.  None were big, but the action was pretty fast.  And then the fishing slowed drastically.  In the next 7 hours, I caught about 20.  Finally got a 17 inch smallmouth to hit the crankbait, but that was the only action from anything of any size.  As is usual for this long float, I found myself with not too many hours left and too much river left, so I paddled through a few pools.  And then the fishing finally picked back up.  In the last two hours, I caught 25 or so more bass.  Still nothing else big, but...

I had been fishing the walk the dog topwater and catching a fish now and then, and saving the plopper for faster water areas.  I was coming down a vertical alluvial bank, and the current had picked up, so I switched to the plopper.  There was this huge explosion as a giant smallmouth came most of the way out of the water to slam the thing...and miss.  The canoe was already pretty close and moving toward the site of the explosion, so I dropped the rod and paddled as hard but quietly as I could to back off and into the slow water away from the bank.  I picked up a rod with a jig and craw on it and tossed it where I'd seen that fish.  Bingo.  I set the hook and knew it was that fish.  I fought it for quite a bit, and thought I had things under control, until suddenly it took a hard lunge and I felt that sickening slack nothingness.  I reeled in and discovered the HOOK had broken on my jig!

Now I have to admit that I never got a REAL good look at that fish.  It looked absolutely monstrous when it hit the plopper with its body mostly out of the water, but that happened so fast, and I've been fooled before on vicious strikes like that.  And it never jumped and the light was wrong to really see it well as I was fighting it.  But I THINK it was really big, like 21 inches plus.

Some other events of the day...I saw more deer along the river than I can remember seeing on a single trip...at least 15.  Which makes me wonder...could it possibly be a year for blue tongue disease, which makes deer come down to the water to drink?  Hope not.  I did smell something dead in a couple spots.

I came upon a just fledged eagle sitting on a gravel bar.  It took off, flying slow and laboriously, and then an adult that I hadn't seen flew out of a tree just downstream to follow along with the youngster.  That was cool.  Made me think again about how common and routine it is to see eagles on just about every float, when 30 years ago an eagle on these streams was unheard of except during the winter.

The river is getting low.  Jason told me he had floated this same stretch the day before, and had to get out and drag several times.  I only had to drag once...another reason solo canoes are better than tricked out fishing kayaks that weigh a ton (insert smiley face emoji here).

Herons were thick, including some just fledged youngsters.  But I passed a heronry that I've known was there, on the other side of a big island, for a long time.  You can't see it from the river, but I'd walked up to it before and it covered five big sycamores and often has at least 20 nests.  And, when the young ones are still in the nest, you can certainly HEAR it.  I could hear some still yammering.

Nice day.  

[jdmidwest]

Sounds like fun.  I miss the floating days on rivers and creeks.

The reason you see more deer along the river is because we are in drought conditions and that is just a good water source.  Blue tongue and EHD come from mud holes and gnats. Flowing water should not be an issue.

[Al Agnew]

1 hour ago, jdmidwest said:

Sounds like fun.  I miss the floating days on rivers and creeks.

The reason you see more deer along the river is because we are in drought conditions and that is just a good water source.  Blue tongue and EHD come from mud holes and gnats. Flowing water should not be an issue.

I understand the flowing water is not the problem, but the disease makes them come to the water to try to drink.  In former years where blue tongue was prevalent I've found a number of dead deer along the rivers, far more than usual.

[tjm]

I think the deer population is just on an upswing, I've seen more deer through the past several months than in the same periods of the past few years.

[top_dollar]

Do you use a clicker or something to count bass? or just can remember really well?  I have a hell of a time remembering how many I have caught, and I am never anywhere near 75 bass in a day.  I feel like once I catch 8 or 10 bass I really start to lose count.   

[Gavin]

Al, is VERY detail oriented, that is why he can excel at art. He takes tons of reference photos to note details. I bet he even counts the scales on the sides of fish, all the good wildlife artists do.