A "Sunny" Day

This particular post could have gone in a completely different direction if the hawg I hooked on this most recent float had made its way into the boat.  Instead I was left wanting another chance to land that monster river pig.  A classic case of "the one that got away".  At least I had a witness :)

My father, brother, and I used to waterski Belews Creek in the summer when I was a young.  I vividly recall getting home from school in August or early September and racing to the basement to prep the boat for an evening at the lake.  My dad would arrive at 3:15 pm, back up to the garage, we would hook up the trailer while he changed clothes, and we were on the lake by 4:00 pm!

One of my favorite things to do on these ski outings was to beach the boat in one of our favorite coves for a break and whip out the trusty zebco 33.  I'd wade the shoreline throwing little curly tail grubs or bettlespins and land fish after fish.  Call them what you like: redbreast, green sunfish, bream, sunny, longear sunfish, readear sunfish, warmouth, etc.  I'm not up to snuff with all the particular species of these colorful sunfish, but I had a ball catching them as a kid. 

My brother and I hadn't done any freshwater fishing in over a year.  We met up around 2 pm at one of my favorite rivers about halfway between Charlotte and Raleigh.  I'd never floated this particular section, but I was anxious to explore and see if we could find a few bass. 

Ambient:  Sunny skies, ~78 F

Water:  74 F, 3-4 ft visibility

I know this medium sized piedmont flow holds a lot of bass, but they all managed to avoid us during this trip.  Although we caught zero bass, there was definitely no shortage of active and aggresive sunnies.  My brother landed a sunfish on the first or second cast with one of my older rods and small spinnerbait.  Throughout our float we probably landed 15-20 each on about every lure we threw (Rapalas, spinnerbaits, buzzbait, Torpedo, Spook, bettlespin, crankbait, Roostertail ... pretty much everything except t-rigged plastics)

Weather was incredible, scenery was excellent, company and conversation was great, and the fishing wasn't terrible.  Bro managed to lose my favorite little spinnerbait, but made up for it with a nice chicken dinner after we finished up.  Hope to meet up with him again this year and actually catch a bass!