Hooked up with Big Papi, Crawdadcraig, and Shoalieman, for some camping and fishing this past weekend on my favorite SC river. Actually, it's the only river I've ever fished in SC. Basserdrew and Bruiser joined us for a couple of days and did some fishing on their own with Amazonriverrunner and Tigertim. We were hoping for an aggressive fall smallie bite, but they didn't cooperate as well as we'd liked. Still, we caught quite a few fish, some nice ones in the mix and enjoyed a lot of good food and laughs.
Shortly after we set up camp Thursday we got on the water. It wasn't long until I was into a good smallie on a Flashback Seducer.
Shoalieman had the best weekend of all of us. He didn't do so well with the long rod, but he put some nice fish on his spin stringer for the tournament. One LM was pushing 7 lbs. This was his first smallie in a couple of years. Not big, but he got his fix.
I caught more LMs than smallies all weekend. Shortly after Shoalieman got his smallie fix, I layed a popper down by a blowdown overlaying a boulder. I noticed a large shadow rising from beneath it's trunk and realized it was good bass. It took the fly, I set the hook and the fight began. I fought it quite a while when it made a B-line for the back of my boat. I had a sinking feeling as I realized it had wrapped around my drag chain line. It was still on and I could see it was a good 4 lbs. or better and Big Papi raced to net it. But, to no avail. My line went slack as I watched her sink back into the deep with my popper stuck in the drag chain line. I got a little redemption a little while later taking this 2.1 lb. LM.
A little after that, Shoalieman had a visitor swim 100 yds. out into the river to see him.
Shoalieman wouldn't pay her any attention, so she swam across another pool to bark at me. She was cold and tired, but a sweet little Jack Rusell. I was concerned she wouldn't make it back to the bank, so I told her to jump in the boat. She did without hesitation and I gave her a lift. She’d obviously done this before because as soon as the nose of my yak hit the bank, she jumped right on it.
I've really gotten into the topwater thing this year. With Saturday starting out overcast, I stayed with it as I wanted my 4 lbs. of redemption. I got a few more smallies like this one throughout the day fishing current breaks in a deep run.
Later, I decided since I'd missed that nice LM by a blowdown, I'd try my luck a little more. It turned out to be a bit of a pattern as I got this 2.5 LM, lost another one about the same size and caught a few smaller ones running the bank of the same deep run.
Saturday night, FBMoche and Ole Hooker joined us a the campsite. A good time was had by all and many of the world's problems were solved. Sunday we broke camp and headed home. Shoalieman hit the water for a couple of hours and found it was worth his time getting a couple more nice fish. We were fortunate the weather held considering the reports earlier in the week and even though the fishing was a bit slow, it was great weekend with the guys.
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