Made it to the other end of the river yesterday. When I got to the ramp at about 5:45 AM I found that cushion on the cooler seat backrest had somehow come off it's frame on the way..I should have recognized that for the sign that it was....
Small skippies (6-8") were abundant but adults were few and far between. Managed to scratch out a couple of 12" +/- skippies and decided to make the most of the fact that it was still early and there'd not been any traffic on the river yet. It was very foggy so I didn't go far before putting out the boards. Nothing doing on the stretch that I went there for but the fog was still heavy so I just kept on pulling them downstream....I was on a stretch I'd never fished before when a fish grabbed the skippy on the rear board...got it to the boat and was scrounging around for my camera before bringing it aboard because I wanted a photo of it swimming along beside the boat...I leaned down to grab the camera...the fish thrashed again and the hook came undone. Oh, well I still got to catch it. I'd guess it was in the high teens weight wise. Put one of the smaller skippies on that board and continued the pull down the same stretch...maybe 50-75 yards farther downstream the forward board got whacked. Got the fish boat side and went to get my net...got the handle extended and managed to wrangle the fish into the net...went to lift the fish into the boat and it went right through the net!!!!
There was a long tear in the net mesh that I'd never seen before and it just fell through the hole!! The fish started thrashing around with the line through the net the net is flopping around and I'm trying to get things under control with just the line in my hand (rod was in a holder) when the line popped...I guess it hit one of the rivet edges or something on the opening in the net.
Arrggggggg... oh well...at least I got to see it! The fish looked like a twin of the first. Made a bait run and got a couple more of the larger skippies before coming back to the same stretch. One of the baits got hit almost as soon as I started the pull. The fish didn't get hooked though and that was it for that stretch. Tried a couple of other spots that have worked for me in the past but nothing doing. By then it was getting to be late moring to mid day so I decided to see if I could scratch out a few schoolies on the small skippies. Amazingly enough I couldn't give away the little buggers. I was quite surprised by that. After fooling around with that for a couple of hours I started working on getting some larger baits for an evening pull. Finally scraped out 5 decent size skippies and headed to the Caney. The river was quite high so I decided to see how far I could go upstream...I finally gave up after running much farther than I ever had before with no sign of running out of water. It was pretty interesting to watch the HOH temp fluctuate as I went upstream....at first it actually got warmer as I went upstream then after a while it started dropping...pretty dramatically actually...and then it warmed up again.
Came across some VERY interesting and promising looking water. There were several deep holes at the uppermost end of where I was at that were just full of fish and bait. I thought for sure the skippies would get chomped. However, after having spent 3 hours or so of running more less non stop on it's highest speed and pulling baits all day alas my trolling motor batteries were too weak to control the pull with any precision at all....took some jumper cables and jury rigged a feed to the t/m batteries from my spare starting battery in the bilge. Awkward but at least I could control the boat then. The river was full of leaves, brush etc. I had forgotten what a PIA leaves are when pulling boards. I was constantly running back and forth from one line to the other clearing trash or trying to avoid snags in the water. A relaxing float it was not. It was however a pretty evening and a gorgeous sunset on the Caney.
It was quite a day for the Murphys...heck it was a veritable Murphy family convention!! (as in Murphy's law)....it started with the cushion on the seat back rest and just went on all day. I kept telling myself...you're just paying dues, paying dues man...it all evens out in the long run.
When I got to the river y'day AM the water was lower than I'd ever seen it ...it was so low that my trailer went off the end of the ramp when I was launching the boat and I almost didn't get it off the trailer at all. The COE generation f/c called for 1 unit from 6AM to 10 AM, 2 or more from 10 AM to 11 AM followed by 1 unit from 11 AM to 10 PM. What they actually did though was 1 unit from 6 to 8 AM, 2 units from 8 to 8:30 followed by 3 units full bore the rest of the day.
The river went from waayyyy low to completely out of it's banks by the time I left. Unbelievable. Saw HOH temps from 58 to 68 depending on where and when. Oh well, it was a pretty day to be out on the water even with all the dues I had to pay. Oh, one other thing...there were quite a few schools of threads running around below the dam and several times during the afternoon schools of white bass started chasing them. I caught several of them on my skippy rig. My guess is that barring any big changes the water zebra topwater bite is liable to get pretty good there in the next few weeks...particularly if you can catch an overcast day.
Topic: Cumberland River 9/27 (Read 2329 times)