Drift & Drag 102

Part 1: I fished with Darren & Blair today on another local lake for smallies. Due to the extreme numbers today, it will be in two parts! It’s hard to believe that at this time of the year we can have a day with air temps in the mid 70’s, but we did. This day was to begin with a light wind from the south and water temps almost 60 degrees. Darren hadn’t had his line in the water for more than 15 seconds as I was explaining to Blair how to properly drag a spider grub when his rod was bent over, solid. This was to be the first of so many that they were about to experience! Darren landed a smallie around 2.5 pounds and was back at it immediately as another fish was instantly hooked up by him again. Poor Blair hadn’t even been able to get his jig to the bottom and Darren was already two up on him. It wasn’t long before Blain was also experiencing the same feeling as he too was with bent rod. I decided that if we were to keep any in the livewell for photos a little later, they would have to be at least 4 pounds and released each of the first ten or so. Eventually, they began to hook up with only bigger fish in the 3.5 to 4.5 pound range and the livewell began to fill. There were doubles being hooked on a regular basis and fish were coming aboard as fast as they could get their lines into the water. Being more experienced, Darren was definitely hooking up more often. Blain was just thrilled to be into so many quality fish that he didn’t even care. Drift after drift in deeper water, there were big fish being caught. Darren always wanted to catch a smallie over 5 pounds, but had never actually done this before. He finally had one on and was about to bring it to net when Blain made an attempt to reach for it. This was not to be as the fish actually jumped over the net and spit out the tube, leaving Darren a little bitter. The next fish Blain was into was a real beauty of almost 5 pounds and Darren said, “where’s the net, it’s payback.” There were just so many fish that even after he missed the 5 pounder, it didn’t matter. The livewell was so full of 4 to 5 pound bass that we decided to take the first of what was to be three photo shoots. Once done, we released the bass and continued to pound “Big Heavy’s” once again. It wasn’t even noon and they had probably landed 40 or more smallies up to almost 5 pounds. There was bigger and even better to come! Between trying to eat and having his phone ringing, Darren seemed like there was nothing he could do wrong as his rod was constantly being bent over. It only takes one hand to hook the fish! In the next couple of hours, they both managed to hook into 10 to 20 fish apiece. You guessed it, another photo shoot was about to happen as there really wasn’t any more room in the livewells once again. Blain was still in awe as he held up some of these huge bass they had just caught. It wasn’t so long ago that they had just taken photo’s and here they were once again. A few quick pictures and back to the depths they went once more!