That's More Like It

The river has come down to a depth more close to normal.  Knowing that the fishing would probably be good, Mort and I picked a day to fish last week.  He had some projects to finish up around home, so I had a couple of hours to dink around by myself out there.  I tried still fishing for about 45 minutes with small live chubs that I had trapped.  Nothing showed any interest.  I then tied on a parrot pattern DT 6 and went to drifting and casting.  I picked up half a dozen smallies, pulling most of them from just off of the bank.  The final fish was a nice 16-incher that came off of a shallow run with scattered small boulders.  These smallies aren't monsters, but they sure are fun to catch.  They hit hard and fight harder.

After I picked up Mort, we tried a little more casting but the bite seemed to be off.  We decided to still fish with crawlers.  This bite was steady.  We had our best luck just down from the Northland Drive Bridge in the middle of the flat.  We caught several little smallies and some suckers.  I had plenty of creek chubs in the livewell, so the suckers were spared.

I dropped Mort off with enough light to head back up river and get set up.  I went to my favorite spot just up from the elbow and dropped in 3 live chubs.  After a few misses, I finally set the hook on a heavy fish.  This fish was on the middle rod.  I tried to sneak it under the line on the rod to the left, but it swam right through it and started peeling line off of the clicker.  I managed to bring it boatside and free it from the other line before too much damage was done.  As a matter of fact, that rod got hit by another good sized fish as I was weighing my first fish.  By the time that I got to it, the fish had run me under a log and snagged me up.  I had to cut that line. 

Stopping to take a look at the fish that I had landed, I noticed that it had a blue zip-tie in the dorsal fin.  There must be someone else who regularly fishes for flatties out there who is curious to find out if he is ever catching the same fish twice.  I've thought about tagging my fish for this very reason.  Pretty smart way to do it.  I looked to see if this practice is mentioned in the regulations book, but I couldn't find anything about it.  I'm not sure what I think about it.  I probably won't bother with it, but maybe.  I caught one more nice channel out of this spot before trying the run just down from the elbow.  I had two lines deep and one thrown up on top of a shallow run.  By this time of night, nothing seemed to be cruising the deep water.  I got 3 or 4 good hits up in the shallows, but each time my minnow was torn off of the hook.  Figuring that it was just a channel, I decided to bag it and call it a night.

The flattie was my best so far this year.  At 18 pounds, it fought a little more like some of the bigger fish that I've caught.  When it hit it yanked the pole down and didn't let it come back up.  That's about the prettiest thing that I can see when I'm in the middle of a dark river.  I'm hoping to top this fish soon and I'm hoping to do so multiple times this year.  Backing off to once a week will make it tough to keep up with the numbers from recent years, but I think I'll do okay.  Time will tell.