Pacemaker Fishing Forum

5/25 - I waded in with the spinning rod at one of my favorite spots around 9AM.  Things started slow, I threw a couple things around before I tied on a brown Mini-Trap that got broadsided by a fat 14" smallie.  I was getting ready to take a picture, but I noticed a wound on it's side that was probably a lesion and didn't want to stress it anymore so I let it off as soon as I got it unhooked.  A few minutes later I lost a 12" smallie on a pumpkin brown tube after that. 

After the sun got up and things got slow, so I went to my lazy option of black rubber hellgrammites on 1/32oz crappie tube jigs.  Caught a dink smallie.  Around 11AM I threw across the current into some shade and got a serious hit.  I saw that I had a big smallie, 19-21", and I started backpedalling to try and minimize the advantage the current would give the fish.  It was a great fight, the fish jumped, I almost fell over into the water, but eventually the little crappie jig hook bent and the big one threw the hook.  I caught another small one, lost another unidentified fish and called it a day at noon. 

Final look: 3 hours, 3x smallmouth, 2x more +1 unknown lost.  Slow action for stable water levels and seasonal weather, some decent size.  Surprised by the absence of sunfish, largemouth or fallfish/sucker bites.  There's usually a couple.

5/31 - Fly rod day at another spot.  Later start, 10AM this time.  Caught 5 smallies, all under 10".  I'm entering this farcical total in the PRSC annual contest.  Also caught a run of the mill shellcracker.  Big fish of the day is this fallfish:

put up a good fight.  All fish caught on a white and red deceiver. 

Final look: 4 hours, 5 smallies, 1 fallfish, 1 sunfish.  The fallfish was the only impressive fish landed.  Promisingly I did see a big 4-5 lb. largemouth in a slough.  I think I caught the same fish two years ago there, glad to see she's still around and growing.  Will be going back this summer to get reacquainted.

6/7 - Did a float this time with Kris from PRSC and our friend Austin.  We went from Strasburg Town Park to Catlett's Landing with a dam portage.  No real good stories.

Final look: 5-6 hours. 3x smallmouth, 1 fallfish.  No size to speak of, all in the 6-9" range.

Last year's fish kill of smallmouth and sunfish looks to be showing.  I've been fortunate to run into a few good sized smallmouth, but over all numbers are down.  The less than dazzling incidental catches of sunfish and fallfish are disappointing as well.

Last edited by CrankbaitGuy (Jun-18-15 8:46PM)