It was hard not to keep reminding myself of Einstein's definition of insanity the last couple of days....
"Doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result"
But persist we did. Fished the Cumberland/Caney area from about 6 AM to 7 PM Wednesday and 6 AM to about 3:30 Thursday. Didn't even get a whiff of a striper on Wednesday. Early Thursday had a fish make a half-hearted swirl behind a bait twice before charging the bait on the rear board without really even trying to eat it before disappearing..the fish obvious was just terrorizing the baits and toying with our affection.
Continued on our way for a while before we went to get fresh baits. Made a small change in our presentation and moved to an area I've been wanting to fish for a while now but never got around to it... we hadn't gone all that far when suddenly the front board submerged..then it kinda just went in a little circle and we're wondering "is that really a fish or is it just super-skippy doing his thing"...turns out that yes it was...it was this 28 lb'er. It was a very weird take.
After landing, reviving and releasing the fish we rebaited and circled back around for another pass...got more or less to the exact same spot and BAM! the front board went down like a rock only to pop right back up sans skippy. Quieted the knocking knees, rebaited and circled back around for another pass... got back to the area and the skippy on the rear board starts doing a jet-ski imitation round and round the planer board...WHOOOOSH...a wash tub sized blow up on the bait...nope didn't get it but the skippy is still going absolutely bezerk....a few seconds later the fish blew up on it again...no hook up though...went on down the bank and circled around again....this time I decided to toss a big 'ol swimbait as well as pulling the skippies...if these fish just didn't want these skippies on their turf I thought I'd see if I could get a reaction bite out of something with more than one hook in it....sure enough on about my 3rd or 4th cast here comes a wake charging up behind the bait....literally right up to the boat before it turned away splashing me as it swirled at the boat. Made a couple of more passes with nothing....guess we finally either spooked them or they got tired of harassing our baits. I can't remember ever getting that many hits in such a small area in such a short period of time. I obviously don't know how many fish were in that spot but obviously at least two and I think probably more than that. Since when to 20+ lb stripers run in schools of any size? I thought that schooling stuff ended when they got to the high teens.
It was an object lesson in persistence...21 hours in the boat without a fish and then all of the action above in about a 40 minute span....it's hard to explain this to anyone that hasn't experienced it.
Over the course of our trip we saw more red tail hawks than you could count, a couple of Osprey, a Bald Eagle, a mink that almost swam right into the trolling motor, a couple of weasels (or something of the sort) one of which was running along the bank with a fish in it's mouth, a couple of ground hogs and some deer grazing along the Caney. Speaking of the Caney, man is that river low! Only went up the Caney once...it was warmer than the Cumberland (which is unusually warm too) got within sight of Dripping Rock bluff after even going so far as one of us getting out of the boat to get over a couple of less than 1 foot deep spots only to finally have to turn around. Man, between impact of the dam work and lack of rain I think it might really be a tough, tough year on both of those watersheds.
Oh, almost forgot to mention that if any of you are looking for some meat for a fish fry the Cordell Hull dam is absolutely covered up with sauger. Everyone was catching them...heck we even caught them on my skippy rigs. Also the lower Caney shoals are just covered up with carp, skippies and HUGE schools of shad.
Tim
Topic: Throwing myself against the wall again... (Read 1717 times)