Rain, rain, go away...
Central Ohio has had only 11 of the last 60 days where it hasn't rained. The water levels in the rivers and ponds are at record highs. While my grass is as green as i've ever seen it, it doesn't do much good for the fishing. This is the 6 week span that every angler dreams about...the 6 weeks that gets me through winter. The late april through May period where the big females expose themselves to spawn, and Males sit on beds protecting the spawing area. And the rain is ruining it all. Once that water temp reaches 60, they're going to start spawning regardless of my feelings about the matter. Selfish bastards...all i want to do is have my picture taken with you! Is that too much to ask?
We FINALLY got a reprieve in the weather today. Forecast was 80 and sunny after a cold front this week that had the highs in the 50's. Dotson, Mevers and I met up to see if this was going to be one of those Epic warm spring days, or one of the sunny hot days that push fish into deeper colder water.
All week we had been looking forward to the Ohio Smallmouth Alliance meeting where they'd talk about conservation, lure building (the boring stuff) and then we'd all disperse to the Darby to wack my favorite fish: the Smallmouth Bass. However, the rain has raised the water levels higher than snoop dogg, and the water flow was so fast they cancelled the meeting. We decided to go to Marysville and wack the hell out of some smaller bass since we were all itching to set some hooks.
I joked that the winner of our Derby would have to catch 25 fish. I was short...I ended up with 33, Dotson with 32 and Mevers with 21. We WACKCKED em. I DESTROYED fish on topwater like I've never done before. Hands down, top water is my favorite way to catch fish. The sun was shining, the beer was cold and the fish were biting. If that nutjob was right and the world ended today, it woulda been a-okay in my book...
After nailing a ridiculous amount between the 3 of us, mevers and I decided to go search for some big one's at a private pond in Delaware. This place was POPPIN. We continued banging em up. Here's some pics of the bigger ones:
