Pacemaker Fishing Forum

Friday's forecast was partly cloudy in morning turning to potential rain in the afternoon.  Needed to use .y floating holiday for work so took Friday off.  Went with a mid morning start to take advantage of clouds and hopefully get a little topwater action going.  Got to say that is becoming my favorite way to fish.  You miss more but the strikes can be so addicting and fun

Started with a black screaming Choppo, supposedly something in the tail makes it different.  Did get a little 13" to blow up on it  ot too long after starting. The river was up about 3/4 of a foot since the beginning of the week with a little more stain, so was also throwing a spinnerbait with a trailer hook. I had a hit on that, but the fish only stayed on for a few seconds. Shortly after that had another one gravel spinner bait and get off as I was bringing it over top of a log. Then a little bit after that had another swipe on the spin rate as it got close to The kayak but this time didn't hook up. 

I had a long break in the action after that while working some decent water with some current. I came up to one area that was kind of a. Semi-edy with a log in the water and thought that looked good. Through the spinnerbait there and one smacked it. This one stayed on until it got about 4 ft. From the kayak and gave one last jump and threw the lure. He was a solid 17 so had to take a little break after that.

Before turning and floating back to the car, replace the swim bait with a plastic crawdad and swap the choppo for my trusty brown and orange crank bait. Top water really wasn't happening so but but I needed to try working a different part of water column.  Stopping in an eddy behind a ledge rock, picked up another small one on the craw.  It swiped as I was lifting it out of the water, so I let it drop.

Floated back down to an area that is a  nice size rock flat that then drops into deeper water and was throwing the crankbait.  Felt the thump when a fish grabbed it and when it did one jump almost all of the way out of the water, I confirmed it was as big as I thought. Then it was just a couple minutes of being patient and letting the fish tie itself out as it did nothing but bulldog and stay down. Got a couple looks and realize just the back trouble hook was the only thing keeping it on. Then after a few very tense minutes, I got the nut underneath of it.

Paddled over the shore because I didn't want to take a chance of it flopping off the board before I could take a picture. As I was laying it on my measuring board, I was pretty sure it was going 20. Then when I stretch it out I thought I had 21 but no matter how much I squeeze the tail, it just didn't break the 21-in line.  But I will certainly settle for a new PB of 20 3/4" smallmouth



I fished a little longer with no luck. But I was okay with that. First 20 plus inch smallmouth in a couple years so definitely a quality over quantity outing on the river