Sunday I decided to fish a local creek by myself while Amanda studied for her midterms. My intentions were to fish a new section of creek in hopes of finding a crappie hot spot. Russ and I have plans to fish together on Tuesday after work, and our last few trips have been pretty rough to say the least. I figured that I'd do some scouting and see if I could find us some new water to fish and give us the best shot of finding fish Tuesday. Instead of experimenting with Russ I decided to do the scouting myself.
Before I got on the water I was organizing a few of my tackle boxes and found a few crankbaits that I no longer used. I took the split rings and treble hooks off of them and decided to put them on Smack Tackles flitterbait. The flitterbait comes with two treble hooks that attach without split rings, which is a pretty neat design but they weren't quite what I was looking for . The hooks were designed to bend under pressure, I believe that with 10lb test you can bend a hook out if you get snagged. That is really not a deal breaker for me because at some points its downright convenient. However, the fact that the hooks are silver means that when fishing in clear shallow water they are more visible than I prefer. So I swapped the silver hooks out for the split rings and treble hooks off of the old crankbait.
Little did I know that the visibility would be an issue when I got on the water. As I arrived to my destination I realized that the water was crystal clear, how clear was the question. That question would have to wait to be answered, because before I got more than a few feet from the bank I had my first fish. Now as I had mentioned before this trip was to be a crappie scouting trip. I had brought two rods along, one of which was a small ultra light combo spooled with 8lb test with a 1/32 oz jig tied on. The other was a low profile baitcaster on a medium heavy 7' rod spooled with 12lb monofilament. I had the flitterbait that I had modified tied onto it just to test the action of the lure. I had assumed that by adding a split ring onto the eye that you tie your line to, that the bait would be free to vibrate more freely on the split ring. Since the visability was so good I decided to cast it a few times just to see what it looked like. It definitely seemed to allow the bait to vibrate a little more, and let it ride upright. I had noticed that sometimes my knot would slide to one side, thus making the bait ride tilted in the water. The split ring eliminated this. I took another cast this time out in the middle more. I was mesmerized with how clear the water was. I decided to take one last cast down the bank. The lure hit the water and I watched it flash all the way along the bank, and then it disappeared. I set the hook and to my amazement I had hooked a solid smallmouth bass. It leaped once, and then twice, and after a few short burst toward the bottom I soon landed the fish.
Its important at this point to mention that this trip was supposed to be a scouting adventure for crappie. Three casts into the trip and I land a chunky 15" smallie, so I did what everyone else would do......I abandoned the crappie and focused on smallmouth. I did notice that when I went to land the fish, that the water seemed unseasonably cold. It felt like the water was in the 40's....I looked to the fish finder to find that it was in fact 54.5 degrees. Just last week Russ and I had fished the Ohio River and recorded water temperatures in the high 60's/ low 70's. I paddled around and tossed the flitterbait toward this bank, and then toward that bank but it seemed that maybe I had just gotten lucky. I was still in pretty deep water with steep banks so at this point in time I still had no idea of exactly how clear the water was. Since I was by myself I had to paddle upstream and then float back down to my car.
As I was paddling upstream the water started to get shallow as I approached my first riffle. My fish finder read 3.5" (my transducer sits 6" in the water so in reality it was probably 4 feet deep) but the bottom looked a heck of a lot closer than that. Once I reached the 3 foot mark I dropped a quarter to the bottom of the creek just to see if I could read the writting on it, and sure enough I could. I nearly fell out of my kayak looking at it, but I could see every detail. Now I understand that many of you have probably experienced visability like this before, but I'm not used to it. To me 3 foot of visibility is pretty darn clear, the visibility here was 5' or better. I probably sat in one spot and watched fish swim around for 20 minutes, it was like I was at bass pros aquarium. At one point I had 3 suckers swimming under my kayak, I kept waiting for a monster smallmouth to appear out of a log jam and chase them around but he never did.
I finally started casting again, and it didn't take long to get a bite. This one was no where near the size of the first smallie but he sure thought he was. He went airborne once and was done. I got it in the kayak and laughed, the bait was nearly half its size. His eyes were definitely bigger than his belly. I thought to myself that maybe the fish had started feeding heavy for fall. About 15 minutes later I hooked into another smallmouth. It appeared that they had put on the feed bag. This one fell into the 12-13" range.
From that point I landed fish after fish, I literally caught a fish every 15 minutes. I quit taking pictures of every fish I caught at this point, I figured I had enough material to write a blog on so I just focused on fishing. I caught a variety of fish over the next couple of hours... rockbass, bluegill, largemouth, and even a crappie. Since I had brought a cooler along for crappie I had decided to keep the crappie and see if I could get a few more for dinner. At about 3:30pm I got to a fallen tree near a boulder which created a deep hole. It was probably the best looking spot for crappie in the whole section of creek I had seen. I dropped an anchor and started casting my flitterbait around the fallen tree.
I quickly picked up two smallmouth and a bluegill. I knew that the crappie had to be somewhere around, so I switched over to the 1/32 oz jig and tube bait. I spent probably an hour probing the depths of the fallen tree, only to produce 3 more crappie. This section of creek was definitely not what I would call a crappie hot spot. All of the crappie ranged from 10" to 11.75", which was about average.
Once I had 4 crappie I knew that it was more than enough for Amanda and I to have for dinner. At that point it was back to smallmouth fishing. I pulled my anchor up and stared casting downstream again. At first I struggled to find a fish, for this trip that meant that I went a half an hour without a fish. It turns out that I had gotten to a shallow portion of the creek. The fish seemed to be located near deeper water, 3 to 5 feet. Once I got back into deeper water the fishing picked up. I was having a blast. I caught another dozen bass in the 12 to 14" range before I decided to break into the beef jerky. I quitely dropped anchor and started eating jerky. I noticed an agressive boil on the other side of the creek. I figured it must have been a carp so I kept eating. About 3 minutes later I watched a shad skip across the top 3 times before something decided to eat it. That was all I needed to see, lunch time was over. I pulled up anchor and silently paddled within range. I made a long cast, almost too long as it nearly hit a tree branch. I then started slow rolling the bait back to the kayak. I patiently waited for the bait to get where the fish had eaten the shad. The bait soon passed the exact spot where I had seen the fish surface, but nothing happened. I kept reeling, by now my bait had made it to the middle of the creek and I felt a thump. I reeled down and set a hook, the fish immediately came to the surface. It looked to be a bass in the 17" range. He tried everything it could to throw the hooks but failed with every jump. I leaned over the kayak and grabbed the smallie to find that he had all but swallowed my flitterbait.
At one point he started bleeding which kind of upset me. I don't like killing smallmouth because their growth rates are so slow, a 16" fish may be 8 years or older. I carefully and quickly removed the flitterbait. I took a few pictures and held it in the water for a couple minutes. I was doubtful that it was going to make it because every time its gills would move you could see a few flakes of blood come out. As I was holding it beside my kayak I told myself if it did die I guess I could throw it in the cooler with the crappie. At that point I wasn't even sure I wanted to eat a smallmouth, but I wasn't going to let it go to waste. After a couple minutes it started showing signs of aggression, puling against my thumb and splashing water. At that point I decided to let it go and see if it made it. As soon as my finger slipped out of its mouth it disappeared. Here's a couple more shots of the smallie.
At this point it was getting late and I knew I still had crappie to clean. I took a few more casts and decided to call it a trip. I ended up catching 22 smallmouth which is the most I have ever caught in one day. I also landed 4 crappie, 1 rockbass, 1 largemouth, and 3 bluegill.
On the downside, I did manage to break my flitterbait. I'm not quite sure how it happened but after 31 fish Sunday, 4 fish last Friday, 3 saugeye last Sunday evening, and 12 largemouth last Sunday morning I'd say it has served its purpose. I got home about a half an hour before dark and cleaned the four crappie. For dinner I had crappie and curly fries. Not too bad for a day on the water. Now I just need to make up my mind for our trip Tuesday, Smallmouth or Crappie?
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