Monday, July 4, 2011

Holiday Weekend

The 4th of July weekend is one of the toughest times to fish. The weather is often hot and muggy, and everybody is out enjoying their time off of work on the water. The best times to fish, if you are like me and just have to get out is at night, or you can put some time in to getting yourself off the beaten path to some hidden water.
Friday after work, while trying to decide what to do, my friend Mike called with an idea to hit up a few local lakes from the shoreline after dark, and not deal with the boats, hoping to pick up a few fish at each spot and move on. Our first Lake produced a keeper largemouth for Mike, a small largemouth for me, and plenty of bug bites for both of us. Lake #2 proved to be our hot spot of the night, where this smallmouth was our lunker of the night:
We each caught a few nice fish at this spot, then moved onto Lake #3, which didn't even cough up a single fish! No big deal, we had our fun. 
Saturday evening I decided to do a little hiking into one of my favorite smallmouth haunts with the flyrod. It wasn't long before I was into fish, with this keeper inhaling a green over white deceiver:
A few more smallies followed suit, but then a couple strips into a long cast the water exploded, my slack line disappeared, and my drag started singing! I had a hunch this was a striper, but my hopes were on big smallmouth. A few minutes in I was able to get a look at my fish, and striper it was. One of the most fun battles I've ever had on a flyrod, as this fish was far larger than anything I intended on landing tonight on my trout rod!
Onto Sunday night, I hiked again, this time a solid 25 minute hike up river. Once I started fishing I was quickly rewarded for my efforts with a beautiful, calm, stretch of river to myself, and better yet, hungry smallmouths....mostly smallmouths anyway, my first fish was a largemouth, a first for me from this stretch of river:
After a few smallies came to hand, I saw a trout rising. Too lazy to change to a more appropriate fly, I threw a 4" deceiver at it. It took him two tries, but he managed to inhale it...
So, that was my weekend in fishing! I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday as much as I did. I'm hoping to have some time on the salt this week, I'll keep everyone posted!






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