The St Croix was beautiful tonight and the fish were biting. Finally had a clear, calm evening so I thought I would jump on the opportunity to chase some flats. The weather for the upcoming week sounds like it could be a little unsettled with rain forecasted most every day.
The water temp was 65 degrees and the pool elevation is 677.4′ and rising slightly from last nights rains. There is a bit of grass and moss floating in the current and it screws up your line every 10 minutes or so. It keeps you busy cleaning your line and resetting baits. Poor bullheads all had concussions from being cast so much.
I have a spot I call the Patience Hole because it will give up a nice fish every now and again but you just have to be patient with it and spend some hours on it. Well tonight the Patience Hole spit out a beauty within 15 minutes of setting up. I had hooks in the water around 7:45 pm and had a screaming clicker run at 8:04 pm and this guy spent about 15 minutes trying to pull me out of the boat. I was all by myself and I wasn’t quite ready to deal with a big fish when he hit. I was bobbing and weaving with the landing net and the rod but I finally managed to get him in the net.
I had him sitting on the floor and I was kind of shaking from the rush of the fish. I managed to flag down a passing boat and talk them into taking some pictures for me. Here are a few photos. He measured 44″ in length and 32″ in girth and weighed 47.6 lbs on my digital scale.
That was it for the night but it was worth it. I quit about 10:30. No Twins game on the radio tonight – I may just have to fish in the rain this week – I’ve got the flathead fishing bug bad.
