I've been on the river a couple more times since my last post, but I haven't been able to break the flathead riddle. The smallmouth are eating everything in sight. I caught 20 in one evening. Only a couple of them were keepers. The channels continue to be quite aggressive. I caught another fish that looked identical to the one that I claimed was a 10 pounder in my last entry. Yeah . . . it was only 8. Fresh batteries in my scale proved me to be a liar. I am quite convinced that it was the same fish. It even had a fresh wound on its mouth and I caught it out of the same spot. Man, was he upset to see me again!
My very last trip was a lesson in frustration management. I decided late that I was going to go, so I was only able to secure about 8 creek chubs and one stray bluegill from the creek behind my house. I got to the river just before dark. I headed up to a narrow section that runs a little deeper and decided to troll. I noticed that the motor sounded different as I was trolling, but it was actually smoother than normal so I didn't bother to turn around and examine it. When I got to the top of this stretch, I throttled up with the intention of heading to the elbow. Instead, I heard what sounded like the air brakes on a city bus. When I turned around, the tell tale was shooting out smoke instead of water. I immediately killed it. After drifting in the current and feeling stunned for a minute, I decided to start it up again and see what it did. It started fine and the tell tale started shooting water as soon as I got it above idle speed. Still, I didn't think that I should go further from the launch, so I moved down a little bit and got ready to fish the mouth of Bear Creek.
I loaded chubs on 3 rods and caught one smallish channel on the line that I threw closest to the mouth. I quickly got hit on the other two rods, but I didn't hook up and they got away with my minnows. I decided to go with the gill and two more chubs. The chubs got hit again and were gone. I was quickly down to 3 chubs in the livewell and the gill that was still out there struggling mightily to get off of the hook. I didn't have time to fully lament my situation before that rod got a little extra pull like the plunk of one string on an out of tune guitar. With that, the gill was gone.
In less than an hour, the cats had whittled my bait supply down to 3 minnows. I decided I'd better get out of that spot before the rest of my bait was stolen. I limped on my lame motor down to the basin above the bridge and fished this area for the rest of the night. I hooked up with one more channel in the 5 pound range before heading home to figure out my course of action in getting the water pump fixed on the old girl. The plan that I came up with is to try to get my hands on the parts and collar a buddy who is more clever at this stuff than I am. We'll see how it goes.
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