7 Days in a row

Since last Thursday I have fished every single day. My last post highlighted Thursday, Friday, and Saturday in which Amanda and I prepared for the tournament Thursday and Friday by fishing heavy vegetation and then Rylan, Amanda, and I fished the Kiser lake tournament on Saturday.

Sunday, June 23

The morning started out with an exchange of texts between Russ and I at about 8am. I just threw out the option of doing a long float in between public access points. I believe navionics had the route at 9.2 miles. At that point Russ agreed to do the long haul. We got the kayaks on the water and had the vehicles at the access points by 11am. The water was stained....visibility of probably 8 inches. I borrowed a couple of Amanda's high end spinning outfits which had a wee craw and a Berkley Powerbait crazy legs chigger craw tied on, so that's what I threw at first. I later switched to a small popper. Russ had a rooster tail and a wee craw tied on I believe. The bites were slow but we managed a few small spotted bass and smallmouth. At about noon the sun got high into the sky and Russ passed under a section of shade to find gar stacked up in the shade. Out came the rope lures. He managed to catch 5 fairly good sized gar while I struggled to keep up, only landing 2 all evening.

About halfway through the float we came across a 14" rock waterfall. By 14 inch I mean a 14 inch drop. I inch up to it and get out to inspect it further. I take my paddle and I probe to see if I can find bottom below the waterfall.....nope it was deep. The only option was to pull the kayak halfway over the rock waterfall and then get in and push myself the rest of the way over. The keel on my kayak would not allow that, and over I went. The current created by the waterfall was rather swift and I struggled to resurface. But with a little effort I made it onto a slab of rock. I looked back to see if I had tipped the kayak and lost Amanda's rods, but luckily the kayak had stayed right side up. At that point Russ retrieved my kayak and we kept fishing. As we paddled off we took note of the depth of the water....35 feet. That's pretty impressive for a creek that averages less than 4 feet. We paddled on and started fishing again. From that point on I managed to hook and lose a massive drum...close to 25", a good sized spotted bass, and a couple smallies that would have been close to 15". I wasn't having a very good day and the lack of sleep only fueled my frustration. The evening began to draw to a close as I realize I have no idea how far we are from the take out. So at 9pm we begin paddling and dragging over riffles. An hour and 36 minutes later we came to the bridge. Turns out we had only fished 5 miles in 10 hours. At 10:30pm I went to swap out the vehicles while Russ waited with the kayaks. At 11:20pm we began to load the kayaks up, and at 1:20am I got home and layed down. My alarm went off at 5:45am and I went to work. 

Monday, June 24

Monday I tried to find people to fish with but I failed to scrounge up a partner. I decided to take the kayak out to a local creek and paddle upstream and then fish back downstream. I had plans to gar fish in order to obtain points for our kayak wars tournament and catch up with Russ. I failed to find any gar this day, but the other fish were biting. I managed two smallmouth bass close to 14", a 12" spotted bass, and a 19" freshwater drum.

The day ended with a storm that got a little too close for comfort.

Tuesday, June 25

Tuesday I managed to drag Amanda out of the house to fish again. We took the kayaks out to a creek that we like to fish for largemouth. We had such a blast fishing hollow body frogs at Kiser Lake that we wanted to throw them again. We hit the creek and started tossing frogs. On my first cast a decent bass crushed the frog before I could even start to walk it back to the kayak. I waited to ensure that the bass had the frog in its mouth and then I set the hook. I hooked the bass and it immediately made two good leaps and threw my hook. The evening progressed and I managed to lose 3 more fish. Amanda ended up fishing for two hours before quitting and just floating around.

Wednesday, June 26

Wednesday I met up with Wes and fished the same creek that Amanda and I fished the day before. Since I had lost so many fish on the frog the day before I decided to start throwing a 7.5" culprit plastic worm. I managed one quick bass. Wes on the other hand had found a hot bite around the large rocks of the creek. His first fish of the evening was a nice channel catfish.

It put up quite the fight on light tackle and it took Wes a few minutes to land the catfish. He later caught 2 more channel cats and a green sunfish. It didn't take long for me to get the itch and I re tied the frog onto my baitcaster. I started working some weed beds and on the third cast I had a HUGE blow up. I saw the fish come out of the water and it felt as if my heart had shifted to my throat. It felt like that one second lasted 10 minutes as I waited for the splash to subside so I could determine if the bass had actually eaten the frog. To my dismay the bass had missed my frog. I left it sit for a couple seconds to see if he wanted to eat it a second time. I then walked the frog all the way back to the kayak. I casted back to the same spot, again, again, and again. However the bass was gone. At this point a storm was blowing by south of us and the thunder was making quite a ruckus. As I took each cast the storm got louder and the rain got harder. I continuously checked on Wes to see if he was sufficiently wet and was ready to go. He seemed determined to catch another fish so I continued to cast. I started making long casts, 20 yards or greater, to the other side of the creek to some fallen trees. I would walk the frog for the first 20 feet off of the bank and then burn it back to the kayak. On one cast I had walked the bait off of the bank and started to burn the frog back when I saw a wake behind my frog. I stopped my frog and then I saw the bass eat the frog, never slowing down to hesitate. I watched to make sure the bass had actually got the frog and this time I set the hook. After a few jumps I got to see the fish and my heart started to race again. This time I won the battle.

The largemouth was very healthy, it went 20.25" and 4lbs 10oz. A new personal best largemouth. I don't think my heart can take much more of this frog action.

The rain continued to come down and at one point it was raining hard enough to cause difficulty breathing. At that point I told Wes that we were going to have to call it quits for the day.

Looks like it was good that I fished the creeks while they were still fishable.