After a stellar scouting trip yesterday, I was excited to have Greg, Paul, and seven year old Benjamin, join me on what I hoped would be a great day on the water catching river smallies. The weather and water conditions were almost identical to yesterday. Clear skies and light winds, making it a little easier for Benjamin to cast with a rather lengthy and cumbersome seven foot spinning rod for someone of his young age. He told me at the beginning of the trip that he had been fishing three times before today. He had never used a spinning rod, but after a five minute lesson, he was casting like a pro by the end of the day. This trip started off much like yesterday. The bright sunny skies kept the bite down, until that magical time about an hour and a half before dark. A few scattered fish were picked up by the three anglers during the afternoon hours. When the clock struck around 6:30 pm, the tide turned and the smallie action started to heat up. I carry a 4-Digit Hand Tally Counter Number Clicker like you would use on the golf course in the boat to get an idea of how many fish my clients catch by the end of the trip. I keep it directly in front of me, and when a client catches a fish, I “casually” pick it up and click it to record the catch. I say casually, because on this evening, casually turned into frantically, which morphed into, “The heck with the clicker, I don’t have time to push it!” When Greg, Paul, and Benjamin got on the fish, one or two of them were hooked up at a time during the next hour and a half of fishing. The smallies were turned on big time, and the size of the fish was impressive. The majority of them were in the eighteen to twenty inch range with the biggest smallie coming in at 20 1/2 in. If I had to guess, now that I abandoned the clicker, I would say they caught well over forty smallies during that evening feeding frenzy. It was one for the record books, and I was happy that they got to experience what this great smallmouth fishery has to offer.
River Smallie Adventures Fishing Report March 17, 2019
