Made it back to the river y'day. One generator was running (#2) when I got there at about 11:45 again and found that just like last week if you had the right rig baby skippies were abundant and willing to bite. After catching a dozen or so I rigged one up and sent him to the danger zone...just like last week it hadn't been in the water more than a minute or two when it got whacked. Turned out to be a 5 lb +/- water zebra. Rebaited and a couple of minutes later the bait got absolutely hammered. As soon as I put the steel to the fish I knew this one was different...it took off downstream and I turned the boat around to give chase with the trolling motor. A while later when I finally got the fish to the boat it wouldn't fit in my net...lol...I had intentionally left my "big fish net" in the garage since I was really just looking for 5-10 lb schoolies. Managed to wrestle the fish aboard. It was this chunky 20 lb'er. What fun in that current on schoolie size spinning tackle. Unfortunately I forgot that I had reset the white balance on my camera at last weeks band performance so the colors in the pictures came out really weird and the pictures weren't very good.


I spent quite a while working to revive the fish and it did finally swim off upright but it was clearly very tired. About then I was thinking that it was going to be another murderizing....however the COE had different plans. After paying the required sinker/hook tax and spending more time in the next hour or so rerigging than fishing they started playing weird games with the generators. First they turned #2 off and then right back on...a few minutes later they turned it off again and turned on #3 then after a little while it was turned back off and #2 turned back on which is where they left it for the duration. The bite definitely slowed down after all that. Caught several more stripers but they were all in the 1-2 lb size range.
You know...now that I think about it...the COE started all that weirdness just a little while before I picked up Ron at the boat ramp....hmmmm.....the Snow effect perhaps??

It was a very nice day to be on the water, managed to scrape out a few little fish and one nice one. Glad you got to get out for a bit Ron even if we didn't slay 'em.
Mike...think you could tie up some sort of streamer that would replicate this size & coloration? Could you get it down 8-10 feet in fairly heavy current? If so I think you'd have a good shot there with the long rod.
Tim