Russ and I had the day off so we decided to hit the Ohio
River Saturday. We loaded up the kayaks and set off for the river around 11am.
Once we got on the water quickly noticed how calm the big river was. The wind
was forecasted to be 5 to 10mph all day long, but I guess it decided to take
the day off too. Water temperature ranged from 68.5 to 70 degrees pretty much
all day long, which is fairly average given the time of the year. Russ and I
started hitting the spots we thought would hold fish, creek mouths, rip rap
shorelines, fallen trees, etc. However, the fish just weren’t chasing schooling
baitfish. We went to great lengths to find fish, even cutting in behind tied
off barges to see if we could find fish hanging in the shade below.
Halfway through the trip Russ and I pretty much decided that
we weren’t going to catch fish on the side of the river we were on. It was the
shallow side, which meant it had significantly less current than the other side.
I knew what the other side of the river looked like from previous trips in the
jon boat in 2012, so I knew it was worth the long paddle across. It took us
about 10 minutes but we eventually made it to the other side. My plan was to
hit the tail end of a deep hole on an outside bend in the river. The particular
spot I wanted to target was where the current had exposed and deposited large
rocks. Since it was the tail end of the hole, it was still fairly deep and very
swift. We paddled up river until we could see the transition where the bank turned
from sand to rock. We started casting blade baits (Flitterbaits) toward the
bank and started jigging them through the rocks. Here’s what one section looked like, you
can see that its still 20 feet deep only 10-15 yards off of the bank.
On the first pass I hooked up with a solid fish. I actually
watched it as he ate my bait on the fish finder. I pulled him up to the surface
fairly easy with 20lb braid and a medium heavy rod. It was a drum, which looked
to be in the 5 to 6 pound range, 24-26” approximately. I had forgot about
having fish grips and I went down to grab the drum and lift it into the kayak. I wasn’t putting my hand anywhere near its
mouth because it had a face full of treble hooks. As I got 90 percent of the
fish out of the water it began to slip, not in the mood to catch a treble hook
to the hand I decided to let the fish fall back in the water and then try
again. Well the fish had other plans, as soon as it hit the water it went right
back to the bottom leaving my bait behind. I wasn’t too upset at this point,
and not because it was a just a drum, but because I had caught a few drum in
the 8 to 10 pound range out of this very spot the previous year. I was
optimistic that we would find one bigger.
We quickly finished our first pass through the tail end of
the hole, a half mile section, and we decided to make another pass. We paddled
back upstream and started fishing again. At this point I had tied another blade
bait on my second bass rod and had set it in a rod holder with my bait a couple
feet off of bottom. The motion of my rocking kayak was enough to give the
bait action, at least that’s what I told myself. About 30 yards into our drift
I feel my kayak swinging in the current, I look over to my rod and the drag is
slipping. I thought I was snagged at first, but the rate at which drag was
slipping didn’t seem to fit with the rate at which my boat was moving. I pried
the rod out of the rod holder and started to pull tight when the fish came off
of bottom and went nuts. I got to fight it for about 15 seconds before my line
went slack. I’m not real sure what I had, it could have been anything from a
gar to a paddlefish. I put the rod back in the rod holder and continued
fishing. A few minutes later I captured Russ getting up close and personal with
a couple passing barges. I like to think to myself that he was saying, “This
river aint big enough for the three of us”, with his fist shaking in the air.
In reality he had just lost a fish on a rod that he was drifting nightcrawlers on, and had drifted out a little further than he had expected. We finished our second pass and decided to head up river and fish an island that is known to give up a few hybrid striped bass. We fished up one side of the island and finally made our way to the upstream point when I caught the first hybrid. It was a small guy, probably in the 12-14” range. It was the first fish I actually landed on the day so I was happy with anything at this point. Russ on the other hand was struggling to find fish, stating that I gave him a defective bait. We fished until about an hour before dark and noticed that a barge had just made it around the bend upstream and was heading our way. We had two options at this point, try to beat him across the river and make our way back to the boat ramp or fish until it passes and then make our way across the river in the dark. We opted to beat the barge across. We made it with 20 minutes to spare, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but when your playing chicken with a barge and you’re in a kayak….you really don’t want it to be much closer than that.
We made our way back into a small tributary and fished our
way back to the take out. At one point I saw 3 fish on my fish finder in 19’
feet of water. I told Russ that we finally found some fish. I dropped my blade
bait to the bottom and made one vertical jig before getting slammed. The fish
came to the surface with relative ease. I had landed my first drum of the
evening, a little guy around 14”. Russ just shook his head and mumbled something
about sniping fish with my fish finder. Soon
the sun set and we called it a day.
Now I typically don’t write blogs unless I have something to
show for it, a decent fish, a scenic stretch of water, or something to explain
(reel teardown, reviews, etc.). However this was one of those trips that I felt
could have gone much better on any other given day. I would go back to the rock
bank and fish again in a heartbeat because I know the fish are there. Getting
Russ to go to that spot again, well that might be a different story.
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