A Christmas Eve I won’t soon forget!
got done shopping around 10:30 and had my buddy meet me at the boat ramp. I was thinking we should fish deep on the bottom with spoons, maybe the white bass had showed up. As we were making our way upriver , there was a boat in the middle drifting for walleye. I slowed down to go around him and saw some strange disturbance on the surface. SHAD!!! I broke out the cast net and got plenty of bait. I haven’t used this particular boat since about the weekend after thanksgiving and doggone it I also haven’t charged the trolling motor battery. So break out the paddle and the cinder block anchor, Yee haw. Thankfully I had a long rope on board as well, the current was fairly swift. Not long into fishing on anchor I get a bite, nice 16” SMB. A couple minutes later I got another SMB a little smaller. Some time passes and we discuss where to fish next and I hook up again. The fish is fighting weird, I kept saying it was surely a drum. My buddy sees the fish out of the back and says nope it’s big smallmouth. Get that one boated and it’s 3.9 lbs, forgot to measure length. We drift down a ways and I think I’m snagged and sure enough the snag begins swimming and it’s a 3.6 lb largemouth. Water temp 46-49, fish caught with live and dead threadfin shad and 6 lb line
A little report with some more pics from Monday afternoon. Had 1 hour after work in the kayak but caught 2 SMB and a bluegill. Had a lovely sunset at 6:09 pm, getting tiny additions of daylight time makes me happy. Did have to paddle the kayak back to the dock in the dark and cold, but it wasn’t too bad. Got her up to 4 mph for a little while, good speed for a 90 lb boat you can stand in
