Hungry Fall Riverbass

About 8 am, I was fully dressed for work in my honda civic and almost made it out of the neighborhood. That little voice in my head was telling me to turnaround, load my canoe, and hit the river!

A brief conversation with my "consultant", a.k.a. Mack, about yesterday's rain and impending flows pushed me over the edge. Shot a text to my boss and headed back to the house. In 30 minutes I was loaded and headed west to enjoy a nice day of solitude on the local flow.

I stopped by a bridge access on my way out to confirm the river conditions ... low and clear! Shortly after, I arrived at my launch spot. This section has produced for me before under similar water conditions (~2 ft visibility and low 50s water temp). I pushed off around 10 am and headed upriver with gusty winds out of the SSW (mostly upstream).



Started off switching between the spinnerbait and a jig. About 45 minutes in, I found the slower deeper water and this was my first victim ...



From there the bass were surprisingly easy to find. Locate the slowest deepest water near the bank and the fish were hiding behind/on wood or right on the bank. It got to where I would anticipate a strike as the spinnerbait rolled and fell over the logs. I caught over 20 keeper bass on this pattern with the spinnerbait (1/2 oz booyah white/chartreuse). These were all very solid fish, all over 2 lbs. I got 4 at 4+ lbs, best 3 would have pushed 60". Biggest was around 6 lbs. I caught 3 in a row in one 20 ft stretch, right on the bank. Also caught another 6 or so dink bass trolling crappie jigs and rapalas. It was an exceptional day for bass.









I spent an hour or so casting for crappie and ended up getting two big enough to filet, so they went home with me.



Made it back to the launch around 3 pm, lugged the gear back up to the car and headed home. Couldn't have been happier with my decision to take vacation and fish today. It was a beautiful day and the fishing was hot!

No Bass Here!

Mack and I switched up our Sunday plans and decided to try some new and big water down south. With rumors of monster blue catfish, I mounted an abu 6500 with a power handle and 17lb mono onto a 6'6" MH bass rod the night before. It's big and heavy, but I don't have a functional 5000 series abu and my 4600s have lighter line. I'm glad I brought the heavier gear.

We launched about 30 min after daybreak. The water was cool and the river was peaceful. As the sun rose over the trees from river left, we scooted past a few parties catfishing the flatwater in john boats and I snapped this photo.



I started with a buzzbait and spinnerbait. Neither were getting any love. As we got into the first stretch of rapids, I anchored up in a pool behind some swift water to wait for Mack. I was slow rolling my white booyah spinnerbait when it got hammered and the drag started zinning. A few minutes later, I hauled in my first catch of the day ... an 8 lb channel cat.



A few casts later in the same pool, the spinnerbait got hammered again, this time it was a 18-20lb blue cat. I only had boga knockoffs (no net) and couldn't get them in its mouth before this fish destroyed my spinnerbait and broke the wire in half!

Mack caught up and we began to see schools of big fish trashing in the shallows. We anchored up near one of these "pods" and I tossed in my replacement wallyworld chartreuse spinnerbait. After a few casts, I got hammered again. After a short fight, I got the fish near the boat and discovered it was a nice 5lb striper!



As I fiddled with the striper, Mack hooks up with something huge on a lipless crank with a medium action spinning rod and 10lb line. He asks me to chase down his canoe as he jumps out of the boat into waist deep water. A 20+lb smallmouth buffalo wasn't what either of us expected, but it sure was exciting.



We continue downstream through the various shoals and rocks, seeing pod after pod of big fish swirling and running, but none would take our offerrings. In one area, we parked the boats on a rocky shoal to cast to the pools below the fast water. As Mack was videoing the area on his point and shoot, I hooked into another striper on the chartruese spinnerbait. This one was a little smaller.

Shortly after catching this striper, I landed a ~3-4 lb channel cat, again on the spinnerbait.  That would be the last fish landed on this trip.  A few hours later, I lost another striper on a weightless fluke and Mack got blasted near the surface by a huge fish on his spinnerbait (we assume a big cat), but it missed the lure. 

The most surprising thing is that we caught no bream and no largemouth bass. In fact, neither of us saw a bream or a bass in the 7 miles of water we covered. We also didn't see any shad or minnows. Water clarity was ~2-3' with a green hue, flow was ~1800 cfs. 

All fish were caught in swift water areas.  Another memorable trip. 

On a Roll

Today made three straight weekends where I got out early for a 1/2 day of river fishing. Many thanks to my loving and understanding wife for making this possible!

Last weekend, I fished some new water on a very small rocky flow west of Raleigh and did very well with the pickerel and had 53" with my best 3 of ~15 bass.  I caught most of my fish on topwater (spook, fluke, and buzzbait).



Today I chose to fish a larger local favorite, but a section I've only fished once prior. I pushed my range a bit more today, waded and drug quite a bit, and was ultimately rewarded with some nice fish.

All the area flows are relatively low, as you would expect this time of year without any significant rainfall. Today's location was fairly clear, with visibility around 4'. The rocky bottom was only out of sight in the deeper holes. Shady banks and the edges of the deeper holes is where I found the bass.

Things started fairly slow with a couple dinks and a couple decent fish on my usual offerings (buzzbait, spook, fluke, swimbait).



Once the sun came up the fish were spooky and I started to notice follows, but no strikes. I was standing next to a deep hole near a creek mouth on the last follow and I decided to switch up my lures and presentation altogether. I broke out a finesse jig that I purchased last winter. It's a small profile 3/16 oz black and green jig and I added a 3" smoke/black flake curly tail trailer.

On my 3rd cast, I landed the best fish of the day.



I proceeded to land about 15 bass on this same jig and had to change the trailer twice due to wear. No more dinks on the jig, all fat and healthly fish 15"+, including this 18"+ I caught right in front of a few bank fisherman who were coming up short.



Shortly after switching to the jig, the weather changed. Clouds rolled in and the breeze picked up. With more favorable conditions for my typical presentations, I tried the swimbait a little more in promising areas with mostly short strikes, except for this ambitious fellow ...



I totalled 56.25" with two around 19". There may be something to this jig thing afterall!

Left Them Biting

I had to be home by 12:30 to relieve my wife for her afternoon plans. I wanted to try a section I've scouted, but never fished. It's 1.5 hrs from my house, so I wouldn't have much time to fish.

I'd heard there were crappie in this section. Saturday night I loaded a small cooler with ice, rigged up my lighter spinning gear, grabbed one baitcaster, tossed the small jigs in my box, and loaded the car.

I woke up before the 4:30 alarm, I assume due to the anticipation of new water. I popped in my contacts, grabbed my keys and breakfast and slipped out the door.

The moonlight was low and it was a cloudy morning. Around 5:45 I pulled into the gravel lot and parked under a street light. The dark surroundings of the parking area were a little creepy. I unloaded my canoe and gear by the riverbank, turned on my head lamp, and pushed off upstream toward the first set of rocks. I paddled/drug/walked upstream about a half-mile before daybreak. At first light, I started throwing a spook in flatwater near laydowns. My second cast gets blasted by a largemouth. It's the only bass I'd see for the next 2 hours. The next mile, I'm trolling a jig and tossing a bettlespin, trying to catch a crappie in the flatwater. I can't buy a bite from the target species. I do land a few sunnies and soon go back to bass fishing.

As I approach my target area for the morning, I switch the lure on my baitcaster to a small sebile swimbait. On the first cast, I catch a small bass. 2nd cast in the same hole, another bass. I proceeded to land 8 out of this one hole before moving on. Most of the bass were short and fat, like these ...




I work my way upstream in the shallow water and I'm catching a bass on nearly every cast or every other cast, but they're all fairly short. I switched to a larger sebile magic swimmer to try and entice the larger fish. Same results, lots of hungry fish, but nothing too big.

I find one pool below a rapid and catch at least 25 standing in one place. It was nuts. This area produced my best fish. I think this was number 21 or 22 from this spot ...




I turn around at ~10 am to head back. The catching continues on my return and then my 10:15 phone alarm goes off. I still have at least 1 mile to go including some serious rocks and ledges, so I had to boogie and the leave them biting.

I only caught one small crappie, but that's ok ... the 40+ bass will do

Summer Striper

I got a taste of the salt with my friend and colleague Chris down in Wilmington. 

It was a long and hot day.  We came up short on the reds, but landed a few decent striper on flukes and spooks within sight of the USS North Carolina.  Good Times!

Three's Company

Today was the day to fill out the 3 seats in my "custom" Mohawk. My son, oldest daughter, and I squeaked out 2 hrs on the pond this morning, and dodged the storms and most of the rain.

She was a little timid at first about joining us in the canoe before we launched. Once we pushed off there were no worries. My son was in the back and did his own thing, fairly well too.

Between the pee breaks, snacks, and playing with worms and fish ... I caught 4 small bass on pop-r. Kids caught a mix of bluegill, shellcrackers, and bass on worms from the backyard. Probably a dozen overall. Good times had by all. Daughter's bass came on a worm speck hanging beside the canoe while I was fishing for a new worm. That Shakespeare Scooby Doo rod has to go, it's terrible.

Wish I could get them this excited about cleaning up their toys!

Take a kid fishing!

Another Happy 4th - Creekin' in MD

It's no coincidence I fished again on July 4th in Maryland. Maryland designates 3 days per year as "free fishing days", where no license is required, but all anglers are required to follow state regs. July 4th is one of those days.

Last year I posted about a successful trip wading a creek near the Frederick, MD area. This year, I brought my canoe on our annual trip to see the in-laws and made a 5 mile float on this same flow. It did not disappoint, except maybe on size.

I scouted a few bridges upstream of last year's wading area and found one that looked promising on satellite images. My wife was kind enough to drop me off fairly early and I launched around 8:30 to cool ambient temps and a nice breeze. In spite of the thunderstorms that blanketed the area the previous afternoon/evening, my chosen creek was not high and muddy as I expected, but instead running just above normal flow and had great clarity.



This flow is a fly fishers dream with a fairly shallow stream bed, wide banks, and lots of hungry fish. One of these days, I'm going to try fly fishing on this creek.





The smallmouth were very cooperative, biting various lures with the most productive being: 2" curly tail grub/jig, rebel minnow, Heddon tiny torpedo, and super fluke jr. I tried a buzzbait, rebel crawfish, jig n' craw, and a few others. Below is a picture of my preferred jig, a 1/4 oz white head with a Kalin's Lemon Merengue grub. I forgot to throw in my 4" lizards when packing and I bet those would have been a big hit. It didn't hurt my numbers as I probably landed 50 smallies, although most were 8"-10" long. Biggest landed were around 12". I did see a few larger fish chasing sunnies I'd caught or following the lure.






I also caught 4 large fallfish, here's an example. These guys were after the rebel minnow.



There was plenty of wildlife, including a family of water birds (not sure of the species) and two green herons that I chased for miles. The family could be cormorants, not sure. Here's a pic.



I got picked up around 2:30 to head back to MIL's house, grill up some of America's finest cuisine, and enjoy a few fireworks with family.

Long Time Coming

Jason is an old college friend and fellow engineer.  We spent many an evening in late night study/homework groups or cramming for a test.  We also managed to fish occasionally while attending NC State ... Sutton Lake in his hometown of Wilmington, James River in my birthplace of Richmond, and one particular evening trip to Lake Wheeler in my scanoe circa 1999 where Jason caught an absolute pig on a pop-r.  One unforgettable fish ...

Fast forward 6 years and we both are back in Raleigh.  On our last fishing trip, we got skunked at Harris one day back in 2006. 

Lately, he's been drooling over photos I post of river bass and begging for a chance to join me.  Over the last 3 years or so, I would occasionally call the night before a solo excursion to see if he was available ... which he never is.  Jason's busy social calendar cramps his professional fishing career.  :)

I finally penciled in an appointment with Jason for a 1/2 day trip on Sunday morning ... 5 am sharp!  We played phone tag until 8 pm on the prior Saturday night, where I told him to meet me at local gas station.

Jason didn't know what to expect and seemed nervous as we made our way to the river.  I think he was expecting to bushwack a mile through tick infested brush, only to find raging water and having to portage a few sets of rock gardens.  He was pleasantly surprised to find a nicely worn trail and calm clear water.

We launched around 6 am and found the fish very cooperative to start the day.  He fiddled with a small senko while I began to hammer the fish on a spook and fluke. 

 He quickly switched to a fluke as well and started picking up hungry bass left and right. 

With ~10 bass in the first hour, Jason was thinking we were going to have a 60 fish day; then we turned a corner and the bite died.  We picked up 2 bass and 10 bream in over 2 hours and decided to make our way back to our starting point.  As soon as we made it back, we quickly picked up more bass.  I also caught 2 nice crappie and one small pickerel to round out the day.  All said, we landed about 20 bass in 5 hours with several in the 3-4 lb class. 

Today was my day for catching, but we both had good fish and plenty of action as well as spotting a rare family of river otters.  If I had to guess, I think Jason is wondering when he can squeeze in another river trip ...

Guy's Weekend

My brother and I have been planning and pushing this camping excursion out through the spring, but it finally stuck on father's day weekend. We wanted a place to take our young boys to camp, canoe, fish, and chill. W. Kerr Scott was our choice at ~2.5 hrs from Raleigh (where I live) and ~1.5 hrs from Charlotte (where he lives).  The foothills location of Kerr Scott offers better scenery that we'd get in the Piedmont and slightly cooler weather.  Furthermore, Kerr Scott is special to us because our family would camp and waterski there at Bandit's Roost campground when we were both pre-teen/teenagers.  Visiting this area is nostalgic, at least for me.

I selected Warrior Creek, which is a newer site than Bandit's Roost, just to try it out.  Turns out the campgrounds are very similar, with Warrior Creek having a larger RV site ratio. I picked an RV spot on the west side, just off the Yadkin, in the upper headwaters of the lake. It was feasible to float from Ferguson or Marley's Ford to this location, but we chose not to do that float.

We arrived Friday afternoon, checked out the river, checked into the site, and setup camp ...



We hit swim beach with the boys and made a delicious grilled chicken dinner at the campsite, then settled in for s'mores, a few rounds of mad libs, and ghost stories.  Before it was all said and done, my 5 yr old conjured a story that included: zombies, ghosts, vampires, bats, pineapple seeds, and horseflies. It was a hoot.


Saturday we floated from the Kerr Scott dam down to Smoot park in N. Wilkesboro. The flow was up a little and the water was swift. There are many down trees on the bank of this section, which would be nice in low flow conditions, but at higher flows they all pose hazards.   I managed to catch 2 small spots and 2 smallies on spinnerbaits and bettlespins.



With the swift and stained water, the float was more canoe trip than fishing trip. My son finally gave up on asking to go swimming and conked out right in his canoe seat. He slept the rest of the way to Smoot.


Hot dogs for dinner Saturday night, cooked on the open fire ... yum!



Our campsite was next to an oxbow lake just off the river and had a nice grassy bank for fishing. Saturday night, my son landed a few bluegill, I got one bullhead cat, and my brother picked up a very nice crappie right at dusk while demonstrating the torpedo action to his son on his son's rod.



Sunday morning we paddled Keowee park area on the lake and caught a few small gills. Afterwards, we packed it up and headed out. My son and I swung by Brushy Mountain Smokehouse and Creamery for a delicious buffet lunch and free father's day ice cream before hitting the road back to Raleigh.


This was a great weekend with my brother and our sons. One I bet they'll remember, and one I'd like to make an annual trip.