Fishless Fishing Beats Not Fishing

 

I failed to get out prior to last weekend’s winter storm, so with another storm forecast for this weekend, I didn’t want that to happen again. I had some lure photos I wanted to shoot for work and had reached a late-afternoon stopping point with office stuff, so I headed for a close-to-home river access.

You can probably guess by the title that I didn’t catch anything, and I only fished for a little more than an hour. Had I let the afternoon slip away without even trying, though, I’d have felt liken I’d missed an opportunity, and in truth I really enjoyed the river outing.

Don’t get me wrong. I always want to catch fish, and that’s the objective when I go. I focused on the areas where I thought they were the most likely to be and tried a few good winter presentations. Failing to catch fish doesn’t ruin a trip for me, though, and I knew when I left home that going fishless was a definite possibility.

Last weekend’s storm brought a lot of sleet and freezing rain and overnight lows in the low teens. Water temperatures undoubtedly dropped more dramatically than Georgia fish are accustomed to experiencing.

I also chose an area where shoal bass and spotted bass are the main sport fish species. Trout waters might have offered better prospects, given conditions, since trout are cold-water fish by nature.

That wasn’t my choice, though, so I won’t ever know. I’m just glad I chose to go fishing.

Pennsylvania Smallmouth Fishing Report

The last word on this blog, way too long ago, had been that I was northbound for a couple of days of smallmouth fishing with Pennsylvania tournament angler, Ty Spade. Although I posted pics a few place, I never did update this page, so I'm finally doing so now.

Despite obvious success that the photo above shows, Ty and I hit tough river conditions and really had to work for our reward. Giant rains the day before I traveled north and a couple of days before that completely blew out one of the rivers he had in mind for us to fish and left the other way muddier than normal. His jetboat also was down, narrowing our options on the Susquehanna River, where we ended up fishing.

On day 1 we really had to grind it out just to catch some fish, although we did end up catching a few pretty decent smallies. On day 2, Ty started seeing some things that gave him clues, and he persisted in a few areas where he knew the larger fish had to be. The river color also got a tiny bit better, although not by much. While we still didn't catch big numbers and we never encountered the furious topwater bite he'd envisioned when we planned the trip, we definitely found high-quality smallmouths for what turned out to be a really fun and productive photo trip.

We ended up catching fish on a fair variety of lures. Among the top producers, though, were a BOOYAH spinnerbait matched with a YUM Pulse swimbait, a Bomber Fat A and Bandit 200.

I look forward to the next round, whenever that might turn out to be.

Thursday Tips: Swing Low

For river fishing, I usually like to allow the current to aid my presentation by casting or pitching an offering upstream of a likely fishing-holding spot and letting the river bring the bait past boulders or branches to fishing lying in ambush position. That's true whether I'm casting a micro jig in a trout stream or pitching a tube in a bass river.

The biggest exception to this basic presentation comes when a fairly strong current sweeps over boulders or ledges in the middle of a river and fish seem to be scattered in the current. In such cases I'll commonly cast straight across the river and let the flow carry my lure downstream against a tight line so that the lure swings out into the river as it travels downstream until it ends up straight downstream.

If fish are active, I like a wide-wobbling crankbait for swinging in the current, and my No. 1 pick for trout and smallmouth streams is a Rebel Wee Crawfish or Teeny Wee Craw. If the fish are a little less active, I'll often opt for a Road Runner Marabou Pro 2.0. With the Road Runner, I'll initially allow it to drift on a free line so that it can sink a bit. Then I'll close the bail to cause it to sweep out into the current and either just hold it still or add subtle rod tip twitches.

The swing seems to attract a different group of fish than the more traditional drift, and on the days it works best, I often don't catch much the other way. Some days the fish don't want a swinging lure at all, but it always is worth a try when you are fishing in current.