Nate and I waded one of my favorite far off stretches of creek in one of the few places we had any kind of water clarity Sunday. It had taken a slight turn for the worse and visibility started at 12-14" brown stain. We got fishing by about 12:30.
Smallmouth were not liking the oppressive heat and sun. Water was like warm bath water...
Not much pattern early on. We were walking through water without bites, that should have produced. A scattered dink here or there.
No topwater activity, barely a sniff on tube jigs, not much on grubs, spinnerbaits etc...
I tried a chart shad Spro 2" crank in 7-9' diver model, this produced some smallies for me throughout the day. Mostly dinks for me with one 12"er popping off only to immediately have an 8" take its place in full view.
Nate tried Sammy 100 and a tube mostly. He got a fish here and there on tube, but not much doing on Sammy.
Nate warmed up a rootwad for me while last night's greek came full cycle. As Nate went upstream I landed the crank a foot from the rootwad and dived the bait 'thunk'. Ooh, there's one. Hey, wait this one isn't small for once...Oh, it is a PIG. 18.5" smallie made me think things had changed, and the oppressive sun had gone down a bit.
Not too long later, I got a 14"er and thought the bigger bass were finally coming out to play. NO. Such. Luck.
Fishing remained unpredictable. Sure- fire spots held nothing, until we hit a stream inlet and suddenly they had a thing for Sammy, after Nate got done playing a dink. His Sammy got 'Ker-splashed'. The fight was on. A big bend in the rod, then a fish under a laydown. Things were in doubt...
I offered to come and help, but Nate just scooped the fish up like a textbook. I've seen a couple of extra hefty smallmouth from this spot before. This was one exquisite bass!
Thunder was heard in the distance. They were done. Got caught a half mile short of shelter when it rained cats and dogs. 6-6.5 hours on the water.
BT 13 SMB (18.5) Goog, Northern Hogsucker
NM 5 SMB (18.5)
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