I hit the river just before it started to rain this evening. On the very first cast I caught a small rock bass. Much better than my last few trips to the river. I started to walk down river to the next hole. When I got there, there was some lady and her kids. The kids were swimming in the spot I wanted to fish. I moved on to the next spot. Things slowed down a bit; I fished through around the bend and started to cast at a log jam. A couple of casts at this log jam and I hooked into what I thought was a small mouth. I brought to hand a crappie; it was a beautiful fish, sort of rainbow of colors. The picture of that fish is above. I moved on down and started to strip a tube jig fly through some fast water and caught a small mouth. It was an average sized fish about 12 inches and on the skinny side, not really picture worthy. I worked my way up and around the next bend and started working a deep pocket between boulders in slow moving water. I caught another small rock bass. I gave this pool another effort and hooked a decent sized creek chub, not the bass I was looking for. I continued down river as it was starting to drizzle a little bit. I decided to drift a small crayfish pattern through a pool that has a huge downed tree with the roots facing up river. I drifted the pool a couple of times and got nothing. I thought I'd give it one or two more drifts before heading back to the car to avoid the rain. On the next drift through, I saw a slight hesitation in the drift, I struck to set the hook and felt a nice hard tug on the other end of the line. Fish On!! I could tell by the way this fish was fighting it was of respectable size. I brought the fish to hand and was really surprised by the size of this small mouth relative to the feeling of the take. I would expect a much more vicious take from a bass this size, it was almost undetectable. A picture of the fish is below.
