Sunday, August 25, 2013

Camping and Fishing 8/22-8/24

I am back and alive. Replete with 9 different rashes, but a ton of great memories.


First fishing while I still remember.

Zach M and I fished Thursday, covering close to 7 miles on foot in 12.5 hours. It was amazing day, overcast and then thunderstorms. Smallies upticked when it rained and went nuts. I got 103 smallmouth bass to hand- loads of dinks, but plenty of nice ones too. ( 18.25", 17.75", 17", 4-16", 8-15") 11 other fish of 7 species total on the day. Zach added 48 (19.25, 18", 17"). We both lost a couple other large fish. Mixed it up quite a bit, square billed crankbait was on fire.
18.25":
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17.75" in the rain:
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18":
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19.25":
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BT 103 SMB  ( 18.25", 17.75", 17", 4-16", 8-15") 11 other fish of 7 species total on the day
Zach 48 (19.25, 18", 17")

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Waded with Mr. Doddridge Saturday, covering 3.7 miles in 7.5 hours everything was again coming up gold for me. I finished with 50 SMB (19.5", 18.75", 18.25", 17.5", 17", 4-16", 9-15") Matt nailed 19 or so. He just couldn't get his favorites going. Ran into Ben at the end of the wade.


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18.25":
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19.5":
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BT: 50 SMB (19.5", 18.75", 18.25", 17.5", 17", 4-16", 9-15")
MD: 19
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18.75":
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Saturday after 10-11 beers the night before, I parked at the first available bridge and went out solo. Sun was bluebird and intense. Fishing was not great , but I managed some nice ones and lost a couple more.

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18.99":
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17 SMB (18.99", 18", 17", 16", 15")

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The true star of the weekend was an unexpected square bill style crankbait at 1/2oz.

More 18-20" fish caught than I can ever remember amoungst the INSA CF crowd.
 

5 comments:

  1. Seems like you had a great trip with some like minded guys. I'm curious about the size of the stream/river as shown in the first photo. Looks like what we would call a small river in TN as opposed to a stream/creek. Also, is there any particular color you've found especially effective in that square-billed crankbait? Thanks, JQ

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  2. Yeah, medium sized Indiana river with very low water. Not much rain in 3 months, John. You'd typically not be able to cast across the river, but a lot of the places where you'd catch a fish nice enough to picture would be at the choke points in shade or near wood, just down from a riffle.

    They were eating shad. We saw huge balls of them at times to 7" long. Imagine that, shad colored baits worked! ;)

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  3. Typical flow would be in the 500CFS range. Much lower now.

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