Fishing Report - Weekend of June 27th and 28th

On Saturday morning, the other boat decided to chase numbers on the fish and stayed around Rim Shoals, floating down to Crooked Creek and then on down to Rough Hole. Because we had put a small wager down in a Big Fish pot, my boat headed up river, making the haul to the dam. They were generating about 8,000cfs which is just outstanding water and we fished with about that much most of the day. The COE did crank it up to 10,000 cfs later in the day and we started to see some trash coming down.

We put on the water about 7:30am and fished from the dam down through State Park. First fish for me was an 18" brown, second fish was a 16" rainbow, and third fish was a 21.5" brown.

We fished on, catching pretty consistently and continued to find really solid fish. My friend caught an 18" rainbow and we had some other really nice 15-17" fish.

We continued to fish around the area and then I finally tied into a good brown, thick bodied and 22" long.

(as you can see, we are a serious bunch)

All was going well until my buddy went to turn on the trolling motor and watched as the prop shot off and sputtered away upstream before sinking to the bottom of the river. We tried to fish around a bit more but the current was pushing and spinning us this way and that so we decided to break for lunch and go fix the trolling motor. The three of us had boated around 50 fish that morning which, is not an outstanding numbers day but I was after the money fish and was in the lead. We checked in with the other boat and they reported over 100 fish to the boat between the 3 of them but big fish was an 18" brown.

With the trolling motor fixed, we headed down to Rim and put in and motored down to the Crooked Creek area. The bite was still hot and we continued to rack up the numbers. The other boat wanted to do something a bit different so it motored up Crooked Creek a bit and they fished for smallmouth which reportedly were biting as well. We motored back up through catch and release at rim and fished the stretch of water about 1000 yards above back down to C&R and we found an incredible bite with doubles on almost constantly. We racked up the numbers there in a very short amount of time and ended with about 90 fish in the boat for the day and my brown remained at big fish. We kept a few for dinner and headed in to filet and fry up the fish.

We cooked dinner at the Rim Shoals Resort pavilion and just enjoyed sitting out on the deck watching big fish cruise the shallows, the biggest of which was a 30+" brown that came to eat some of the scraps from the fish we had cleaned. I happened to notice something else of interest chewing on a fish carcass and decided to have some fun.

You have never seen the likes of grown men running for their lives when I came up to the pavilion holding this.

A banded water snake...granted it was a good 34" in length, but a harmless animal, nonetheless.

We fished Sunday morning as well but were very relaxed with it, boating fish here and there but mainly talking and enjoying hanging out in the boat. All in all, a great trip with as many laughs as fish caught, great conversation, and a real weekend retreat from the rat race.