Things have been a little chaotic recently. I've gone back to school at the one and only Denison University and 100% of my days are occupied by football activities and any "free time" is usually taken up by ice baths and naps. So, as you could've probably guessed, fishing has not really been accessible. With this post I will recount my most recent fishing trip, and one of my all time favorite fishing trips. Let's do this.
1. As school approached I wanted to get some good old family time in. Most families would go to a nice steakhouse for dinner, or have relatives in town for a final sendoff, but our household does things a bit different. We usually end up fishing. With my Dad working long hours at work, an early night often means strolling through the doors around 9:30. But since I was leaving he'd step up his game a bit and before you know it we were heading to the lovely Raccoon Creek for one final outing. With the trees lush with leaves and the narrow creek winding through the forest, a fly rod just wasn't gonna do it. I had my waders packed, along with my new spinning rod and a tackle box full of fresh rapalas for the fall season. Lookin basically like this. We hit one of our favorite holes and started castin. Starting off slow with crank baits of each and every color, the hot day just wasn't producing fish. After an hour of shitty ass fishing, we thought we should bring out the big guns. And that we did. A worm. A bobber. And a size 4 hook. Game on. Hitting a new hole just a bit down stream, the fish were feasting. But my writing, as you all have probably noticed is pisspoor, so lets just show some damn pictures huh. A night full of beautiful smallies, ending up with 8 or 9, along with a PB rock bass and some dinky ass bluegill, it was the perfect send off with Pops.
These fish aren't goliaths lets be real, but on a light rod they put up one hell of a fight. These smallies bend the rod a bit, and for some reason catching wild fish is 1000x better than a stocked pond. More work finding the holes, using the right bait or lure, and just the overall surroundings make this set up so freakin sweet. Like I said, not a super exciting fishing story post but hey it'll keep your eyes busy for a bit. And I have other football dudes who are down to fish so we could have some realllll "meaty" posts com in up. Stay tuned.
Oh shit, part 2?
2. Throwbackkkkkk. This story will not be nearly as cool as this throwback... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eSN8Cwit_s but I'll do my best...
Led my the one and only "Lou" from Mad River Outfitters, it was winter time and all local ponds had frozen over or were simply too cold to fish. Not rich enough to fly down to the Keys, or good enough to hit Steelhead on Lake Erie tribs, so I was shit out of luck. Until I get a call from Adam Donahue, who is a longtime friend of my brothers, and ridiculously talented fly fisher. He had set something up with Lou from Mad River which half of you have probably met. Super cool dude btw... Here he is with some massive ass fish...
....
Continuing on...
We hop in the car at like 5 in the morning, still dark out, and we go two and a half hours south to the ohio river. Still super cold...so what does he have in store. Check this out.... so we pull up to this parking lot and its by a big electric factory. And somehow, they use hot water in the factory that ends up getting pumped into the Ohio river in this back little cove. We're rocking winter coats, gloves, hats, everything, and I'm expecting this water to be ice cold, cuz 200 yards down from us we could see some ice in the damn river. We get in and the water is a warm 65. Like almost felt like a bath tub. There was steam com in off, and it was just insane. I'm getting pretty pumped recalling this story if you can't tell. So we start hitting this canal, wading out into basically quick sand and start tossing flies. Big clausers, and we also have spinners throwing big gummy minnows as far as we can. After being told we were going for stripers I had some skepticism, cuz it was January and I couldn't feel my face. A couple casts in with the fly rod and boom, fish on. I don't know what you're picturing but here ya go...
One of my personal favorite fly rod catches.
The fun continued and people were bringing in fish left and right. Literally insane. They were just slammin these clausers like it was their job and fish after fish would put up insanely tough fights. Here are some more pics to recall this amazing trip.
My best fish of the day, this one on a spinning rod.
Adam Donahue with a huge striper he got off his fly rod
Dinky ass fish, but had to show off the steam and everything. This one hit a blue and white clauser.
If I don't do this trip again this summer I'll kill myself because it was hands down one of the sweetest trips a fisherman could go on. Any takers?
Another post over with, and Drew if you're reading this I'm sorry but you're stringers of pike will be on the next post. Speaking of pike...
Just soak that in...Pike having another pike as a snack? Get Jeremey Wade on the phone... (Credit to Drew)
Hope that could kill some free times for all you goons out there. More to come soon. Tight lines.
-CL
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