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.
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