We started out fishing dip bait and crawlers. Our first stop was at a snag that we had never tried, not far from the Knapp Street launch. Nothing touched the dip bait, but we picked up a few rock bass on the crawlers. I had plenty of bait, so we threw them all back. I made a mental note for future trips when I might be running low on chubs and gills. I have already had some luck fishing the down river ends of islands under the current conditions, so I suggested that we head up a quarter mile to the island that I've spent most of my time fishing.
The channels found our dip bait pretty quickly. We started with a couple of eaters before Mort sunk the hook into a much bigger fish. I'm guessing that it was around 6 pounds. We don't know for sure because I opted to skip the net and just grab it for him. You can usually get away with this when you're using heavy braided line and a big hook. Different story with light mono and a small treble hook. As I was holding the line, the fish thrashed a little bit and popped off. I could tell Mort was disappointed. A fish story is always better when you can report exactly how big the fish was. Estimates are viewed as exaggerations. Maybe he should say 8 so the guys at work figure it was 6.
After a little bit, we decided that we had fished this spot out. We opted to swing up to the top end of the island and fish all of that wood that was stacked up against it. Didn't get a nibble. The spot was money for me the first few times that I fished it, but it went south quickly. I haven't caught a fish there in 3 trips. We hadn't stayed too long when I suggested that we head up to the next island. We nosed up to the bottom end of it again and found fish one more time. These islands are gold when the river is high and dirty. I couldn't be happier about this discovery. We fished several snags throughout the evening and never got touched by a cat in them. The slack water holes below the islands are the place to be.
When we finished at this spot, I ran the mile back down river to the launch and sent Mort happily on his way. I headed back up to the exact same spot to set up for flatties. With the creeks all high, I wasn't able to get my chubs. I had saved several panfish from the night before and picked up a dozen huge sucker minnows from Gander Mountain. It turns out that the sucker minnows were the prey of choice for the flatties. I got a pretty quick hit on one, but I briefly felt weight and then the tension released. I think that it was a smallish flattie that had the minnow by the head, but hadn't grabbed the hook behind the dorsal fin. I would have 3 more misses like that before the end of the evening. I'm pretty sure they were all small fish. Small flatties will hit with a bang-bang-bang, where the big boys usually grab your bait and don't look back.
The 17-pounder in the picture came with just the slightest bit of light left in the sky. It hit on the pole that I set up behind me. The clicker was on, but this flattie managed to grab the minnow and run without turning the spool a single click. I was sitting there waiting for something to happen when I noticed that the line on this rod had moved from my far left and was now in between the other two lines. I grabbed the rod, reeled quickly until I caught up to the fish, let the rod load up, and sunk the hook into her. I've never seen a flattie run all over the place like this fish did. It raced around like a channel and then tried to keep going right on past me when I finally steered it boat side. I was eventually able to tame her and bring her close enough to grab that big lower jaw. She had quite a bulging belly, so I'm pretty sure that it was a female full of eggs. I'm expecting an imminent lull as the flatties move into the spawn. Hopefully I can pull a few more out before that happens.
No comments:
Post a Comment