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. 

A Little Redemption

I spent most of the day yesterday fighting to keep my eyes open.  Work was tough, donating plasma was tougher.  Ignoring conventional wisdom, I blocked out my need for sleep and headed back out to the river at around 7:30.  I put in at the launch in Ada off of Fulton Street.  It's probably a little over a mile up from the Knapp Street launch that I have been using most recently.  This is a new launch to me and I liked it.  I headed down river towards the islands where I have been picking up my fish.  As I passed a few other islands on my way down river, I had a thought that coming back up in the dark could make for some tough navigating.  I planned to just take it slow and keep the spolight handy.  I tried fishing some of those islands, but they just had shallow flats behind them and didn't seem to have as much potential to hold fish. 

When I got down to the island where I've been doing most of my fishing, I decided to drop anchor just off to the side of the island and a little up from the bottom point.  The current was a little more swift than I had figured and I still had some momentum going from motoring downstream when I dropped the anchor.  I dropped it right under a big downed log and just about took a header over the front of the boat when it violently jerked to a stop.  Thankfully, the boat and I were no worse for the wear once it whipped around and settled with the stern facing down river.  I tried to fish, but I knew that I had some work ahead of me to get that anchor out so I pulled in my lines just about as soon as I dropped them.  With my lines in, I went to work on the anchor.  I grabbed the rope and jerked the anchor up and down, hoping that this would shake it free.  All it did was make the front of the boat bob and dip.  My next trick was to start the motor and slowly move upstream.  Keeping the boat pointed directly upstream, straight towards the rope, I started at idle speed and gradually increased the power.  The anchor popped free just as slick as could be.  I was pretty relieved that I wouldn't have to figure out how to fish without an anchor.

A creature of habit, I decided to head down and fish the clump of wood at the top of the island closest to Knapp Street.  I picked up a few smallies and rock bass with a crawler on one line and got bumped a few times on the cut chub on the other line.  I finally sank the hook into the fish on the cutbait.  It acted more like a flattie than a channel.  It gave me more of a solid, strong run than the flippy-floppy, spazzy fight of a channel.  Sure enough, when I got it next to the boat I could see that it was an ugly little flattie.  He was all blotchy and had one messed up eye.  Mine wasn't the first hook that he'd tangled with.

I slipped down to the bottom of the island and dropped 3 live chubs in.  I used two huge chubs on 10/0 hooks and one smaller chub on a 7/0.  I thought that this smaller rig might give me a better chance of getting the hook into some of the small fish that have been stealing my bait.  It didn't pan out right away.  That rod got rapped 3 times hard and my minnow was gone.  With just a little light left, I headed back to the bottom edge of the productive island.  Fishing all live chubs again, it took a little while for things to get going.  I finally got a good hit on one of my rods, and then a few others.  The hits were all isolated by several seconds and I didn't get the rod load that I look for before setting the hook.  When the rod sat still for a few minutes, I reeled it in and found that the fish had bitten the front half of my minnow completely off.  I threw this rig back out with a fresh chub and pretty quickly got a more solid bite.  I grabbed the rod and set the hook on another smallish flattie.  Shortly after 11:00 that same rod got hit and I reeled in a nice 8-pound channel.  At midnight I finished off the trip with a 10-pound flattie.  Steady action and some solid hooksets made for a good night.  Some big fish would have made for a great night, but I had a feeling of satisfaction as I pulled my anchor for the last time.

Picking my way through the islands in the pitch dark did prove to be  pretty tough.  I allowed myself to get sucked into a narrow side channel that was only a couple of feet deep at the top just before it rejoined the main channel.  Thinking that I was clear, I increased the throttle and then realized that I was very close to hitting a tiny island that had collected some wood.  If the river stays up and I keep fishing this section, I imagine that I'll get familiar enough with it to navigate it with my eyes closed.  For now, I better take it slow and keep that spotlight burning.

I got to bed at around 1:30 in the morning.  Sometime during the night our youngest got into bed with us.  That woke me up, but I didn't stay awake long.  At 5:00, Luke went into the living room and turned all of the lights and the TV on.  I had to get up and send him back to bed.  Surprisingly, I feel pretty good today.  I'm not having to fight to keep my eyes open.  Still, I'm planning on heading to bed early tonight.  Luke and I are heading out tomorrow.  I'll drop him off with Grandma before I night fish, but I'm going to work on getting him into some decent channel cats while he's out with me.  Time for the boy to take the next step.  (Note:  I had to go home from work sick the very next morning.  I've committed to Michelle that I'm going to slow it down.) 

Mr. Bigshot

One fall evening a couple of years ago, I was at the launch dropping my boat in when another boat pulled up to the dock from the river.  I noticed that the guy was someone that I had known from church when I was a kid.  He and my dad knew each other quite well.  I did the "remember me?" thing and asked him if he fished the river much.  He said that he didn't, but was just giving it a try.  He hadn't caught much.  I took this opportunity to brag about how I had it mastered.  I went into all of the fish that I've caught, made sure to tell him of the several 20+ pound flatties I've hauled in, talked like an expert about tackle, bait, and tactics, and generally probably wore the guy's ear out.  I followed up my droning with a slip, an awkward arm flapping attempt to get my balance, and then a  plunge into the cold river.  After he made sure that I was okay, I could see him fighting pretty hard to keep from laughing at me.  I'm guessing that as soon as he pulled away he got a full eyes watering, belly shaking guffaw out of it.  I can hear him telling his wife when he got home, "Hey, you remember that Matt Elyea kid?  Yeah, he didn't turn out too well . . ."  I'm pretty awesome.