Since the honey hole is getting opened up to the public soon, I put out an all points bulletin to everyone that's been asking for me to take them to the secret spot. I assembled a pretty motley crew of some good friends I haven't seen in a long time. We met at my house at 6AM and headed out in search of MONSTER LargeMouth Bass.
The bite was pretty quick off the bat. Everyone got involved early in the action. Hoss was the first on the board with this nice fish, his first of the 2010 season.
We were getting bites and it seemed promising. We were all catching a few but the bite was slow. I fully expected it to be wild, especially if you're getting up that early in the morning. Ray caught a really nice one in the corner, in fact he said it was the biggest one he'd ever caught. I didn't get a picture because i was waste deep in water trying to find a 7+lber. I had a big ol bass on at one point and broke my damn rod! Just snapped it right in half! Luckily Ray had an extra rod that hooked my reel on. I ended up with 4 smaller ones.
Then it stopped.
Completely shut off. Not even a nibble for about an hour.
Hoss and I started throwing night crawlers and the bluegill weren't even biting. Hoss caught a pretty big snapping turtle that was not too happy to be on the end of his line.
We tried everything. Every type of lure, presentation, color...i fished every level of the water column. Couldn't even get a bite. The most fun and yet the most frustrating part about fishing is trying to put the puzzle together. What's it going to take to get the fish to bite...we just couldn't figure it out.
We decided to walk down to the Darby and fish for Smallmouth. I was pretty pissed off to say the least. I just drug 4 of my buddies out to the honeyhole at 6 in the morning promising to put them on fish and it was closed for business.
I put on a white jig with a white twister tail. We found a slack pool right by some current and started casting. Hoss caught this smallmouth on his first cast
And then it happened.
All hell broke loose
On my second cast I connected with a smalley. Next cast I caught my first ever Sauger!!!
pretty fly for a white guy
My very next cast my bait got CLOBBERED!!! I knew I had a good smalley on...man do those fish fight. Largemouth pretty much roll over and let you muscle them in, but smallmouth fight you to the death. I had to strip off drag, open the bale and let him swim...basically wear the dude down to the point i could land him. and boy did it ever pay off!!!
Personal Best Smallmouth!
2.5lb 18 inches
ON THE VERY NEXT CAST I hooked up AGAIN with another Giant!! We thought it was a smalley, but it ended up being a 19 inch Sauger! Look at this huge Marble eye!!
I love catching fish with teeth!It was quite a scene. All 5 of us casting into this same small slack pool with the same bait. After my 3rd consecutive fish everyone was scrambling through my tackle box to put on the jig rig. It's a damn good feeling as an angler to establish a pattern and have everyone else you're with trying to duplicate the magic that's happening. It might be the best 5 minute span of my fishing career.
I ended up catching quite a few more smalleys on the Darby. All in all, I had 4 LargeMouths, 7 Smalley's, 2 Sauger's and 1 Rock Bass. I turned a terrible day on the water into one of the most memorable times I've ever had in my short fishing career.
Let's do it again tomorrow!
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