I say River Run in the title, but it was really a very casual river wade. A friend I fish with often and I spent two+ hours wading the Chippewa River this evening. 

 

The day started out sweltering hot and muggy, and we made plans for the evening thinking it would be pleasantly cool. It was cool, but not pleasantly so. The wind picked up, temps dropped, and I'm really glad I threw a hoodie in the car before I left, because I needed it. 

 

Cool temps notwithstanding, we managed a pretty fun trip. 

 

My friend struck first. He was fly fishing and nabbed a beautiful little trout. It was small but we were both elated, because even though we had heard there were trout in this river, neither of us had ever caught one. 

 

 

I managed a dink smallie minutes later, and a nice sized rock bass minutes after that, both on a T-rigged Yum Dinger. 

 

 

 

More time went by. Neither of us having much luck. I lost three plastic lures to gnarly snags. I was trying to fish a deep pocket created by a fallen, half submerged tree. This stretch of river had many such pockets, all of them quite deep, and I had a killer day on the river smallies at this same spot last year. The spot I was trying to drop my Dinger into required a long and accurate cast, and I'm not the best caster, hence why I lost several baits. Finally, I gave up on the pocket after zero bites on several well placed baits. 

 

I turned and threw my bait down stream into more brush and laydowns. 

Nothing. I started to retrieve my bait, kind of playing it on the way back to me. There was a barely submerged log that I had to get my bait over, so I reeled down fast and popped the lure up and out of the water to clear the potential snag. As the lure left the water, a fish lept after it, took the bait mid-air and crashed back down. FISH ON! I landed my best smallmouth of the year so far. 14 or 15 inches, and quite fat and healthy.

 

 

Way to fish, Papa! Your smallie is gorgeous.

That rules she ate it like a topwater almost!  That sounds nuts and incredibly fun - great times!

 

That's a beautiful smallmouth dude!

Sounds like a fun day!