Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Bill and I decided that Banker's hours were best so we splashed the boat around 9a. John Durbin was already out.

A little back drop: Bill and I went to the same HS but we were about a decade apart. We were also neighbors for 20+ years. Getting schedules to match is an ordeal but we settled on today, finally. I told him I didn't know what the river would look like.

We found out. It was fast and "milky".

At our 1st stop, which was close by, I got some bites from either teeny smallies or Blue Gills. But they were bites.

I had several plans (we ended up at Plan G)! Plan A to E produced nothing but frustration. No bites other than the teeny ones at the start. Did I say it was frustrating? We even fished some nice looking eddies as well as some calm water but no results.

During Plan E, I got my line in the TM. I lifted it out,  as we screamed down the river, and worked on getting all the line out. Now, we had blown by Plan E so I stopped the boat (it was 12:15p) and declared that it was  lunch time. I ate my PB and cheese sammie while I thought about what to do next.

Once we ate, we drifted aimlessly and I remembered an area that I had fished many moons ago. We got there and started throwing at targets. Throughout the day I kept telling Bill, "there should be a fish there". But there never was any.

But saw some disturbance in the water and told Bill to throw behind it and all of the sudden he's tight!

It was beautiful 16.5" smallie that Bill fought perfectly! SKUNK is off!



BTW, it was now about 1p or so. He caught the fish on  an old white tube (long) on a bare jig head.

We worked the area some more while drifting.

Now he was throwing a Storm Wild Eye type swim bait which is a favorite of his when he goes after LMB. I was not confident in it until Bill hooked in to a much bigger fish than his 1st one. When it jumped, we knew he had a nice one. But as Bill says, "the smallies have but one job after eating, spitting out the hook!" The fish got in the current and promptly schooled Bill. We lost it but it was great to watch the battle.

Around 2 pm, I still had a skunk on.

But not for long! I was able to get this nice 17"er in the boat.




Finally, I got one and a fattie too!

I caught another one later...



...and that was it so we called it around 2:30p.

At the ramp, we ran in to Khahn Nguyen and his buddy as they were headed out.



He's a big bass slayer and that's what they were after.

We were both satisfied with our efforts today and it certainly was a beautiful, relaxing day out on the water...well, except for the annoying wind that was NOT in the forecast.

Edit: Khahn got the afternoon bite! They caught 9 including this beast!