Why don’t you ever post? Saturday when I was out on Pool Two with Drew, he asked me how come I had not posted this year. I shrugged my shoulders and simply told him that I haven’t really had anything to post! I didn’t really have the best spring/summer for fishing sure I got out enough but never really put a good pattern together. I didn’t have any stories to share. Maybe this fall will be different!
This morning I meet my buddy Greg at O’Brian State Park where he left his car, we headed up to Osceola and launched for a trip down river. Knowing that the river was falling and s the sand bars are harder to navigate and I did not want to risk running back up steam. For those of you interested in fishing this stretch of river this system worked great, we spent the better part of the day without fishing spots that had been pressured and most of the time we had the spots we fished to ourselves. Lots of space, lots of quiet and minimal traffic all on a very beautiful river then add not much wind and cooperative fish we couldn’t ask for much more.
After launching we immediately got into smaller fish but who could ever argue with cooperative smallmouth. The bite continued all day and by the time we pulled the boat we easily caught over 30 bass with size being all over the board. We did manage three that went over the 3 pound mark and for myself these were by far the nicest bass I have caught on this stretch of river. All fish were clearly feeding well and released.
Throughout the day we made a couple of adjustments that seemed to trigger more fish. In the morning we mixed up a variety of plastics and jig weights but we quickly found the most success came fishing an eighth ounce jig on a Gitzit tube. We targeted any rocky shorelines and the best were ones that had good current seams and a quick drop into 6 to 8 feet of water. We primarily fished the top end of these runs, whenever we got fish we would motor back up hitting these same areas more than once. A key was to cast right up to shore, as soon as the tube hit the water give the lure a sharp snap causing the lure to make a more vertical drop. We did get fish deeper which tended to be larger, but we also snagged up more. Another key pattern was that when the tube hit the water we would see smaller young of the year minnows scattering on the surface. When this happened get ready we would almost always get bite. After a great day on the water, a thumb chewed up from lipping fish here is hoping todays trip is just the beginning of a fall run worth talking about!
September 6, 2011 at 1:24 am
#1228810
. I do think the smallies are getting a little bigger on pool 2 this year to.