Jen and I headed out to the “homewaters” and got into a bunch of rock bass and smallmouth today.
Right off the bat I caught several creek chubs on a dry fly which is pretty fun. They strike just like a trout would, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one bigger than six inches or so. We headed upstream, and Jenny was doing a great job of casting on her second time out. We both ended up catching some fish out of a nice pool. I got this big rock bass on a streamer:
We kept heading upstream and found a nice pool where there was some springs entering the river. We caught a bunch of fish here. I think the fish wanted to stay in the cooler water. We were using hoppers, chernobyl ants, streamers, and I even caught two fish on a copper john nymph. They were eating just about everything except dries, but I caught a little blue gill on a dry. Jenny hooked the first largemouth I have seen in the river:
Jenny also hooked her arm real good, and we had to do some streamside hook removal surgery. But she has her own style of casting she calls the “Swoop and Flick,” and she is getting good at it. Between the two of us we must have caught around twenty fish – mostly rock bass. It was a very relaxing use of Labor Day, and today was also the unofficial last day of summer. Hopefully we can squeeze a few more fishing trips out this year.
