december 25: what I got for christmas

[coldfront]

a day all to myself on the water.  light winds, daytime high about 60°F.  only a handful of trailers in the parking lot.  current dropped from 27000 cfs when I got there to about 13000cfs for bulk of the day.  took a bit for the bite to pick back up.

put the boat in, just nosed up the river into the current on the trolling motor.  spent next 5 hours just on the trolling motor tossing basically a crappie jig.  1/16th ounce ballhead (Kalin) jig  head with a 2.5" Keitech easy shiner.

tried the usual suspect colors:  electric shad, chartreuse/blue and white ice.  as is 'usual', white ice was the only one to get bit.  to improve the hit rate, I added a small bit of chartreuse to the bottom half of the boot (tail).  not much.  just enough to flash on the tail wag.  great 'mimic' for the threadfins here (locally called 'yellowtails').

retrieve was slow, steady.  water temps at 48°F meant most bait was moving pretty slow, sluggish.  bites were just 'pressure'  ... so setting the hook was simply speeding up the reel and leaning into the fish.

probably somewhere around 30 fish yesterday.  many were small.  none were huge.  all were welcomed and enjoyed.

solid spot


nice black.  right at 14 inches

average smallmouth


best smallmouth.  right at 3 lbs.  not 'over'... made that satisfying 'kerplunk' sound when she jumped boatside.


LMB, gullet shot.  remains of a shad... bait du-jour


money shot.  about a 4lb largemouth.  unexpected.  quite 'welcome'.

[Hobious]

nice!!  I got a bread bag...yup.  a bag made for the bread I make. hahha

great fish!!

[Mike Cork]

Now that's a great way to spend Christmas Mine was equally enjoyable though, had 7 grandkids and 3 adult children preventing me from hearing the football games.... Wouldn't have it any other way. I did get a set of fire extinguishers, one to replace the one in the boat and one to replace the one in the truck  

[Donald Garner]

CF, tks for sharing the trip and those pictures with us.  Glad you had a successful outing.

[Pat Dilling]

Sounds like good Winter time fishing to me!  Congrats!

[coldfront]

been learning to love 'winter' fishing.  although 60°F doesn't sound like winter...