Yesterday

Did our annual work outing @ Blue Springs Ranch yesterday. I'm the only one in the group that does any fishing so it's sort of a different trip than I'm used to but you wont ever hear me complaining about the boss giving us the day off work to go floating. 

Weather was perfect, river was a bit choked up with all the falling leaves, especially in the slack water areas. We ended up having another canoe tandem head out in front of us and a gaggle of kayaks behind us along with one small raft. We had 5 other canoes in our group so we were not exactly a stealthy bunch, my brother and i quickly settled in at the back of the pack and he kept me in position to make quality casts most of the time.

Topwater started off quite slow so I was mainly sticking to a fairly heavy Chomper rig in a darker green color and a brown/orange craw rig. The dark green was def the ticket yesterday, ended up with 6 smallies by lunch on Chompers and one that came unbuttoned on the craw. While we stopped on a gravel bar for lunch I was wading and casting to some deeper holes. Had a small largemouth following every cast but not ever taking any pops on the craw...I spent 3 or 4 mins goofing around with it and couldnt irritate it enough to strike. I went over for a sip of my beer and swapped to the chomper rig. The small bass was still finning around in the same spot, so I tossed the chomper out in front of it and it it immediately dove on it and I quickly landed it and threw it back. Kind of funny how a simple color change can make all the difference.

As the day went on the small whopper plopper started to produce quite a few fish (sorry for not taking a single photo, had my phone in a dry bag and didnt feel like messing with it). I had one big bruiser follow all the way to the boat and come blasting up when I lifted the lure out of the water, wish I could have hooked into that one. Had a number of small fish on the zara spook puppy as well until I lost it and didnt have a backup. Tied on a smaller green plastic popper and it was working more on bluegill than bass but provided a bit of action.

Normally have a good day with the buzzbaits on that stretch but they just weren't interested in any size or color i had in my limited tackle selection. The leave litter on the water surface made the treble hooks a bit of a pain but the fish seemed stacked up under the spots with lots of leaves so it was worth dealing with. 
 

Always a good, easy float from Blue Springs. Close to home and scenic enough to 'get away' for a few hours. Saw a bunch of bald eagles, a very late dropped fawn that was laying about 2 ft off riverbank thinking it's spots were good camo for the dirt I guess, some noisy kingfishers... River never really produces much size for me in that stretch but there's always a good number of fish to be caught if you just want some fun action. Be sure to bring some green/pumpkin plastics and some topwater lures.