Decided to take another day off and hit the river; fished from 11-4pm.
I went by myself and my two labs, now, instead of worrying about putting friends on fish, I could take the time to explore new spots and work on my pitching WDs.
I first hit my spots which produce on Monday. I pitched 3/16-5/16oz BfishN jigs with plastics leaches, plastic crawlers, and real crawlers. I focused on the tips and moved in closer to shore hitting all the depths and range of flow. I could not get hooked up with an eye to save me. I thought I would troll the area since that has always been producing…still nothing. I trolled three other areas without a fish or hit to show for the effort. I lit a cigar and figure I would venture out and explore new areas.
I ended up in a complete different are about three miles away working some new dams. Finally, after 3 hours of nothing, I got bit…a 21″sauger! Wow..I could have sworn by how hard it fought, I had a 26″ eye on. What a fun fight. Second pitch…another 20″ eye. I ended up taking four, losing two and having two other hits. I finally perfected my technique. The perfect weight was the key..after losing numerous jig on the bigger rocks, the perfect weight that allowed a crawler to appear to be tumbling downstream and stay just above the rocks and allowing my to raise it up and down. Seemed like the fish were stacked on higher-flow tips of dams on 10-12fow.
Once the pitch bite seemed to be over…out came the rattle shads and smash shads..it was on like donkey kong. Using a mix of small and large shads took the biggest eyes of the day with a 25″ being the biggest. I found a lot of eyes along a breaking near WDs that paralleled the current. Unfortunately, all fish came in about 1h15min before I had to get home and leave. Can’t wait to get out again.
