Pacemaker Fishing Forum

On Tuesday, George and I met up for a little float on the river. We knew we were going to have to deal with some rain at the beginning as it was raining for both of us on the drive to meet up. We ended up fishing through 2 hours of rain, thankfully most of it wasn't too heavy. Rain jacket and rain pants, I unfortunately forgot the rain pants. But thankfully it wasn't too cold after it was done. Raining so it wasn't too bad.

The outing wasn't memorable for numbers of fish caught but it was all about the variety. I don't know about George, but I have not fished the river with somebody and  such a variety of fish. I think I caught seven smallmouth, with three or four more throwing the crankbait on a jump. I know George got a few more smallmouth than me but I'm not sure how many. I think my biggest smallmouth went about 15 in on a fluke and I'm not sure what his biggest was.

The variety started not too long after the rain stopped, with George holding up a really nice crappie. Even from the other side of the river I could tell it was definitely a really nice crappie. Then after a few more smallies for each of us, I got the next type of fish with this really nice largemouth that went 18 in on the nose. That hit the reliable green swim bait.


Then a little later, I had my reliable brown and orange crank baits almost next to the kayak, and a solid 20-in. Walleye came up and grabbed it. I had it on for 10 or 15 seconds but it did its roll and popped off. I would have liked to have got that in the kayak. Then towards the end of the floats, it was time for the last bit of variety and highlight of the day. Day. I threw out the crankbaits, reeled it in a few feet and all of the sudden it got slammed. It shot off and I briefly thought I had that big old smallmouth that I was looking for. But I quickly knew it wasn't a bass. I thought it was a catfish and when it got close I saw some brown and thought it was a flathead. By this time after a few minutes of the rod bit and being turned in a couple circles, George was close by. That's when he saw all what it really was which was a big old carp. After a couple more minutes I managed to get it in the net, even though it was too big for the net. This big old carp went 10 lb and almost 26 in.


That was certainly one interesting way to end the float. All we could do was laugh. The carp was not foul hook, and had the back treble in its mouth.  The final tally was four different species landed with a fifth almost landed/ conservation boatside release, depending on how you call it 🤣