Tuesdays With Morty

Mort and I picked a perfect summer day last week to get back out on the river.  We fished the normal stretch up from the West River launch.  The sky was filled with huge, billowing clouds. They almost looked like they could hold some rain, but we never got a drop.  It was hot when I started out early in the afternoon, but it cooled quite a bit by the time I picked up Mort at a little after 5:00. 

I had committed my alone time to fishing for smallies and walleye.  I ended up spending most of the time trolling for eyes.  I tried a chartreuse Wally Diver and a crawler harness with a Berkley Alive worm in place of a live crawler.  I thought that it would hold up better against the snaggy bottom.  I ran through all of the deep lanes, spending a solid couple of hours plodding my way up river.  I believe that I briefly had a walleye on the crawler harness, but it was gone after a few head shakes.  Not much of a pay off for all of my efforts.  For the sake of being able to say that I had caught fish when I picked up Mort, I spent the last hour drifting and casting for smallies.  I caught 3 or 4 before heading down to the launch to meet him. 

When I picked up Mort, I suggested that we continue the pursuit for walleye.  He was game.  I gave him the rod with the Wally Diver on it and I continued to troll the crawler harness.  I was still letting my line out when he announced that he had a fish.  It turned out to be a 16 inch walleye.  It was the first walleye that we had seen come out of that part of the river in a long time, so we were quite pleased.  I think that I'm going to focus on them a little more throughout the rest of the summer.  I'm starting to hear stories that guys are doing well for them around there. Later that evening we saw a couple of old boys floating leeches along the bridge pylons under slip bobbers.  They reported that they had also caught a 16-incher.

We spent most of the rest of the evening still-fishing just up and then just down from the bridge.  Mort fished crawlers and I decided to lip hook some smaller creek chubs on a one hook crawler harness.  I figured that the current would spin the blade as it sat stationary at the bottom of the river.  The smallies were hot.  They were jumping on the worms and the chubs.  We caught several.  Most of them were smallish.  Our biggest was a 15 incher that bit on a chub.  This fish really had some shoulders and was built like a football.  It stayed deep like a hog.  I was pretty impressed when I saw that it wasn't a very big fish. 

While we were fishing just down from the bridge, we saw a guy fishing a frog in some slow brackish water that pooled around a small snag.  He threw the frog into the snag and began to steadily bring it back.  When it had just cleared the wood, a big smallie came completely out of the water after it.  She completely missed the frog on her first attempt, but came right back and got hooked up.  The guy said that he had caught another nice one in the very same place earlier in the week.  I think that I still have a couple of those Ribbit frogs.  Something to try.

The flatties are still off, or I have completely lost my touch.  I fished deep water around some beautiful snags.  I used live chubs and cut sucker.  Neither got touched.  At closer to midnight I moved up into the flat next to the snaggy holes looking for some cruisers.  Nothing up there either.  I anchored one last time just above the bridge.  When my third spot didn't produce a whisper of a hit, I finally packed it in.  July has been cruel to me in regards to flatheads.  I've probably just got one more chance to avoid a big goose egg for the whole month.  I may try to get my hands on some different types of bait to better my chances.  I've still got a good supply of chubs, but I'll probably try to get some gills and bullheads before my next outing.  Something's got to work.