Had brought along a new fishing buddy who was very arrogant and was determined to out-fish me. We started in 4.5’ using CT’s with a 16” leader with 1/8oz jig/gulp. His first cast SLAM drag ruing out, I reel in my rig to help him land his first fish. 18” sail cat put up a good fight against my partners high-end walmart fishing rig. That’s when the smack-talk really kicked in. His next cast brought in an easy 18”-20” monster trout. Again, I reel in to get out of the way. He swims the fish toward me so I can get it in the boat and “oops” his line breaks off. (No landing net on board) AS the sun rose and the wind tapered off, we fished and moved to deeper water. The water temp in the morning was around 84 degrees and went as high as 85. The water clarity was 6.5’ (I could see the grass on the bottom the water was lightly tainted, but discolored enough to make the green grass look brown) (that is 2x as clear as it was since my last report) The Trout were hitting on the cut treats we added to our jigged-gulps as the day progressed. Since I could see the bottom we abandoned the CT’s and jigged. By 11am the surface water temp climbed to 85 so we went to deeper 6’-8’ foot and found some really big trout. (Had some of the best “cold fried chicken” and sub sandwiches I’ve had in a while. All the trout were hitting on the gulps tipped with cut bait. I tried tipping with a chicken tendon and landed a regular salt water cat… I was cut off three times, and seemed to be spending a lot of time re-rigging while my partner was slamming the fish left and right while the SMAC talk carried on and on. I had lost my confidence but was still determined to fight. Then I heard the first rolling thunder and the fish started hitting us harder and more frequently. I started packing up and told my buddy to call it a day, and he kept casting, saying one more cast… remora, rock bass, a giant lizard fish and another big trout lost at the last second laterally flung itself over the gunnel back to the water. I repeated we had to go, I could see the cloud bank building and we headed back to the hill and trailered the boat around 1:30. On the way back in , we passed 40-50 boats scalloping in the middle of the rock garden. It was a quite a sight as I have never seen so many boats scalloping at once. I am sure the storm drove them all to the ramp (parking lot was packed all the way down to the intersection and some more trailers’ at the cross roads) and it probably turned into a nightmare at the ramp with the in the rain and lightning. Within minutes the storm front was on the fort and the river. We were on the way home and were tired from the early wake-up call. We gave our catch to some other folks that didn’t do as well and they were very thank full not to go home with an empty cooler. Over all it was a good day on the water and conditions appear to have improved considerably since Debbie passed through.
