Fishing the Rising River, 2/19

Wednesday I met up with Russ and hit the water around 8:30am. I had originally planned on sleeping in and meeting Michael Murphy at 10:30am. However, after a few texts back and forth with Russ he decided that he didn't need to sleep after he got off work. Sleep was overrated and he would be fishing Wednesday morning as well. Here in southern Ohio we recently experienced a significant snow melt, which had most of our smaller rivers out and over their banks. The Ohio River on the other hand takes several days after a large rain event or snow melt before it fluctuates. The NOAA had the river at 34.8 feet and that it would rise nearly 18" during our time on the water Wednesday. This was slightly alarming, but not enough to keep us off of the water. Russ and I met in the parking lot at 8:30 and began to unload all of our gear into our kayaks. We then drug our kayaks down small hill and into the water.

We then proceeded to paddle upstream, our goal was to then to drift downstream hitting current breaks and log jams along the way. Russ and I had slightly different plans, I wanted to hit a few spots for hybrid striped bass and he wanted to focus on catfish. On our way upstream I convinced him to give the hybrid stripers a shot before he switched over to strictly catfishing. We pulled up to the "Hybrid Striper Spot" and worked our baits in and out of the current breaks. I tried Smack Tackle's Gizz 3 (crankbait) and a tandem Zoom Super Fluke Jr rig before I decided to break out the shrimp and liver combo. I rigged a piece of shrimp onto a size 1 hook attached to a 12" leader, swivel, and a 1oz casting sinker. I tossed it out near a current break and watched as my bait drifted into the slack water. No sooner than my bait had settled on the bottom I felt a tap. I paused, dropped my rod tip, and set the hook. On the first cast with shrimp I landed the first fish of the trip, a small 18" channel cat. (Good enough for 10 points for our Kayak War tournament) I then proceeded to re bait and toss my bait back out into the current. After a brief 10 second wait I felt another tap, this time around I feel several taps before the fish starts to pull my rod tip down. I dropped the rod tip to give the fish line and then I set the hook.

This went on for about 45 minutes before I decided to move. I caught over 20 small hybrids and a couple channel cats. I was burning through my bait and I wasn't even halfway through my trip. By this time Russ had headed back downstream to his log jam. He had already been gone for 30 minutes, and it was now around 11:15am. I knew Michael had to be on the water somewhere so I paddled downstream to see if I could find him and say hey. As soon as I rounded the bend I found Michael setting on the bank casting toward a tree in the middle of the creek. I stopped to strike up conversation and to see if he had caught anything. He was still working on finding his first fish of the trip, but he said Russ had pulled in a nice channel cat off of a fallen tree. I believe Mikes actually quote was, "I was paddling upstream when I saw another kayak fishing near the bank....I didn't know if it was Russ or not, but then I saw the guy pull in a big channel cat....then I knew it was Russ." I found this pretty funny because once you spend any time at all with Russ, you will figure out he's all about catfish. We could go bass fishing and he'd catch catfish on bass baits.

Mike and I spoke for another 5 or 6 minutes before I decided to paddle downstream and check on Russ. I previously had Buckeye Kayak Fishing Trail's #1 spot on their YAK OHIO Catfish category with a 25.25" channel. I figured he had a good shot of beating me, but I wanted to know for sure. Sure enough he had landed a channel .25" larger than mine. He also told me that he had racked up 30 points for our Kayak Wars team. At this point I only had 10 points so I had some ground to make up. I paddled over to the next logjam downstream and tossed some shrimp and liver at the head of the logs.

I caught a few small channels, most of which were right at the 18" mark. I actually ended up losing one nice acrobatic channel cat. I had moved from the head of the log jam to the core by tying off to a tree branch near the surface of the water. On my first cast I felt a thump and then my line went slack. I started to reel up slack when all of a sudden the fish decided to make a run. My rod began to bow, and my drag began to sing. On the fishes first run it decides that it wants to make a 1' jump out of the water and over a tree limb....which then of course wraps me up in the tree. I could see the fish struggling below the surface so I dropped my rod tip and began to pull my anchor when the line went slack. If I had to guess I'd say the channel cat went every bit of 22-24".

After that fishing got pretty slow, and at about 1pm Russ paddled over to Mike and I and said he was headed home to hit the sack. Mike was working a deep log jam probably 20 yard upstream of the fallen tree I was fishing. Less than 5 minutes after Russ leaves I hear Mike say hes got one. I didn't think much about it at the time so I told him congrats and went back to fishing. Two minutes later I hear him say, "Its a nice one." At this point I'm amazed that he is still fighting the same fish, so I look back to find his rod doubled over and him struggling to keep his rod tip up. He was using both hands to hold the rod up the fish was taking drag at a rather slow rate. At this point I knew it was time to pull anchor and take a closer look at Mike's fish.

  He fought the fish for another couple minutes before we caught a glimpse of the fish. It made a huge boil and we saw a good chunk of its tail. It was too dark to be a hybrid striper, and to tall from top to bottom to be a catfish. We were clueless. After another 30 seconds of pulling and lifting, Mike brought the fish to the surface. It was a giant buffalo. Now came the fun part, how in the heck do we get this thing in his kayak? He reached behind his seat and pulled out a net that was probably 12" in diameter, something I would consider a good crappie net. I looked at him and said, "Nope that ain't going to work, Do you have fish grips?" He then pulled out a set of metal fish grips and tried to get a grip on the buffalo's "sucker like" mouth but failed to find anything to hold onto. I offered to give him my set of Fish Grips, they had a larger surface area than his metal fish grips so they might just clamp on enough to lift the fish into his kayak. He then reached behind his seat to pull out his very own set of fish grips. (Why he had 2 pairs, I'll never know) He then proceeded to clamp onto the buffalo's mouth and then pull the fish out of the water.

At about halfway out of the water I noticed the fish grips slip down the buffalo's mouth, so I told Mike that we should try to lift the fish from both the head and its tail. We then grabbed his crappie net and got the tail into the net. From there it was pretty easy, Mike hoisted the buffalo into his kayak and began to prepare for photos. First we started off with a picture of the buffalo on the hawg trough. (Mikes actually on another Kayak War Team)

The buffalo then proceeded to make a few flops and crack Mikes hawg trough. I feel pretty confident in saying that he didn't mind one bit.

Mike and I then went back to working the fallen trees and log jams. Near the mouth of the creek we found another hot bite. One particular spot gave up 3 channel cats in under 30 minutes, the largest of which was this nice 24" channel.

At this point we had drifted all of the way to the mouth of the creek, it was only 3pm so we decided to paddle back upstream and try all of the spots again. For the most part things were slow, the first few spots were very disappointing. I did manage my first kayak war blue cat of the year while drifting chicken liver on a 1/2oz jig head.

Shortly after this blue, I caught another little guy. However, he was a few inches short. Eventually we made it to one of my favorite spots in the creek, a deep hole, with several trees, and a small feeder creek. I dropped anchor and tossed two rods out. I set one in a rod holder and held the other one in my hand. Then the rod in the rod holder began to bend, and bend, and bend. I quickly grabbed the rod and set the hook. By this time of the day, the water was up at a minimum of a foot from where it was when we arrived, so the current was getting pretty strong. With that said I knew I had hooked a good fish, the current may have played a role but this fish was definitely putting up one heck of a fight. It kept its head down the whole fight, using the current to push itself to the bottom every chance it could. I brought it to the surface at least five different times only to watch it tuck its head under the current and dive back down to the bottom. Eventually I won the battle and the fish rolled over onto its side and gave me an opportunity to get a fish grip in its mouth. I got it on the board and was shocked when it only went 25".

Mike paddled upstream and took a picture a quick picture for me.

After the picture Mike decided to head back home, a nearly 2.5 hour drive. I stuck it out and worked a few more trees until the sun set.

On the trip I landed approximately 18 channel cats, over 24 hybrid striped bass, and 2 blue cats. Michael had landed a giant buffalo and caught a nice channel cat around 20". Russ had caught over a dozen channel cats and one small hybrid. We were covered in fish slime and wouldn't have had it any other way.