Saturday Russ and I decided to float a seven mile section of a local creek just up the road from us. Smallies were on the agenda, but to be honest we were just happy to get out on some flowing water again. Just about every week, particularly my days off (Wednesday), we'd get an inch or more of rain. For the last month and a half the creeks have and rivers have been high and muddy. The trip started out pretty slow, the first couple hundred yards had us dodging large boulders and fallen trees in water that was just about too fast to fish. We found a small break in the current and pulled off to see if we could find a few fish sitting in the current breaks behind the large rocks. I took about a dozen casts with a shad rap in green olive before I decided to slow things down a bit and try a jig and chigger craw combo. A few casts later I had a fish boil near the boat right where my jig would have been. I reeled down and set the hook, right into the side of a small saugeye.
We worked the current for a few more minutes and then decided to head on further down stream. We drifted along for a hundred yards or better before finding another area of slack water. Russ found the second fish of the trip on a Storm Flicker Shad, similar to a shad rap. It wasn't very big, but it would make a lasting impression. As Russ pulled the small 10" smallie into the yak he went to grab the lip of the crankbait when the smallie decided to bury the hook into Russ finger. At this point I was unaware of what was going on, all I knew was that Russ had landed a fish and then made a loud "OHHHHH" sound. I soon discovered that the "OHHHH" was the sound he made when the fish drove the top treble hook into his finger. Now the fish and Russ were both in a predicament. The water was moving along at a pretty face pace and there was a fairly shallow rapid with a fallen tree ahead. Russ was holding the fish with one hand in order to avoid any further flopping and hook penetration so he was unable to paddle. I paddled up to examine the situation and discovered that this wasn't going to be a quick fix. I pushed Russ off into an area of slack water behind a rock and started looking for a set of pliers. My first objective was to try and get the fish off of the hook, I calmly told Russ to give me the fish...."I'm not going to drop it" I told him. Well the fish wasn't very cooperative and in total I think I may have let it slip at least twice. Each time the fish flopped Russ would hold his breath and look at me with the "You better get this fish off " look. I finally managed to pull the smallie off and we began contemplating how to go about removing the hook from his finger. Russ seemed to be in good spirits after the fish was removed so we took a few pics.
After some debating we decided that it would probably be best to run the hook through his finger out past the barb, try to pinch the barb down, and then pull the hook out the way it went in.
It took nearly all Russ had in him to push the hook through his skin the rest of the way. At this point we took a pair of pliers and mashed the barb flat and removed the hook from Russ's finger. He quickly retied his bait and went back to fishing. No more than 5 casts later I hear him yell out that he has something but he doesn't know what it is. He yelled out that it was, "staying on bottom like a catfish." I looked over just in time to see a bronze fish break the surface and leap 2 feet out of the water. At this point Russ backed off his drag since he had tightened it up to pull the fish off of bottom. He was using 6lb test and he didn't want to take any chances. Eventually, Russ casually leaned back and grabbed his net, and after a few short bursts of drag he had successfully landed the smallie. It looked decent from where I was sitting, but I was unaware of how big it really was. I yelled down stream to Russ and asked him, "how big?"....to which he replied, "Oh 16" probably........(10 Seconds later) 18.75 or 19." I thought he was pulling my leg so I asked again how big it was and I got the same reply. I paddled down to get a closer look at his fish. He was right, it was a giant.
We quickly snapped a few pics, put her in the water for a minute, and then snapped a few more pics before releasing it back into the creek. At this point we started making jokes about hooking ourselves for a 19" smallie. "Heck yea I'd hook my finger for a 19" smallie."
We continued our float, picking up a fish here and a fish there. We eventually made our way to a fork in the creek and I decided to go left and let Russ go right, I chose wrong.
After dragging my yak up and over a fallen tree in 3.5 feet of water I was on the move again. We floated along and picked up a few more smallies in the 12-15" range, nothing big but it sure was fun. Along the way I broke a month old rod while portaging, and Russ lost 3 crankbaits.
Russ soon broke the 15" range with a 16.5" smallie near a giant house sized boulder. This time around he had caught the fish on a jig and chigger craw combo. (On accident really: He thought he was throwing a spinnerbait but he couldn't feel the blades thumping so he looked behind him and in the rod holder was a rod with his spinnerbait. He stopped reeling the jig and got hammered.)
Russ was wearing the smallies out, I personally attribute his success to pent up frustration that he has had over not being able to fish for catfish on the local rivers. Regardless the smallies where having a bad day. At about 7pm we arrived at the take out minus one rod, a half dozen crankbaits short, a new personal best smallie, a pierced thumb, etc.....I'd call that a pretty good trip.
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