Part 2: After having such a big meal last night, we both decided to skip breakfast and head to the river instead. I opted for a different section in pursuit of fresh, untouched metal heads as we hiked into an area that was free of fresh footprints. I thought Jay was going to hit fish in every spot he fished, but to my surprise that was not to happen. It took over an hour and several holes before he finally had a take and was “Locked Up”! It was another beautiful, fresh steelhead and one hell of a battle before I grabbed the tail of an 8 or 9 pound fish. With a very light, pink stripe down the side of this fish, I couldn’t wait to take a few pics. Once more, the fish was released unharmed afterwards to fight another day! Jay was definitely getting the hang of this and I thought it was time to relax on the instructions and see what he could accomplish on his own. In the next spot, I showed him where the fish generally hold under this water flow and backed off to be one with the trees. Although it was hard for me not to continue instructing him, I knew it was for the best. It was even tougher seeing his float go under in the holding area and not react. Fortunately, he was paying attention and set into what was to be his personal best of the trip. This was a big male and he had other ideas in store for Jay. I knew he was about to have the fight of his life as line peeled from the reel and the fish headed down river. I just had to coach him a little bit to try and gain the upper hand before another disaster occurred. As he started to gain some line, the fish took even more out and we were almost forced to follow him down. Fortunately Jay was able to turn the beast and began to reel him back up stream to where I could manage a shot at the tail. I made sure that I was only going to take one attempt and made it count with the glove. What a relief when I got my hand around his tail and cradled the front of him to show Jay what he had just caught. This was a spectacular fish of between 12 & 13 pounds and definitely worthy of a few pictures before being released. Jay was happy before, but once he realized how big this fish was, he couldn’t have been happier. At the beginning of this trip, he would have been just glad to get to play with a couple. He never imagined that he would land a fish of this size on his first trip. Once we calmed down and re rigged his line from the fight, he was ready for more. I thought he had learned enough to be able to fish on his own after this and set up my rod to show him what a Center Pin float rod could do. Somewhere along the way, he hooked into another silver bullet and fought what I like to refer to as a “Skippy”. It was a steelhead of around 3 pounds and just went ballistic. We didn’t bother to take a picture this time, as his last behemoth of a fish was more than enough! I finally got to wet a line after that and 6 casts later, I was tight to a real chromer. This fish had all kinds of power as he literally went mental! There was nowhere for him to go as I easily turned the fish and took control. Minutes later I was beaching & tailing an 8 or 9 pound silver bullet on the ice flow nearby. I took a moment to show Jay the fish and carefully released him back to where he belonged. We fished a little more before getting out of there all together to try another section of the river. We actually decided to go back to the same area we had fished the day before and see if we could get into a few more before we headed back home. I had to retie my setup due to frayed line and left Jay alone once more to do this. A few minutes later, I heard a voice call my name and looked over to see Jay’s float tight up at the tip of his rod. I thought he had a problem and went over to see if there was anything I could do. Apparently all he wanted to do was show me that he had touched the tip of his rod because there was a fish on the end of his line. He had managed to land a beautiful steelhead of around 4 pounds and needed no help in doing so. I had created a wise guy! I just unhooked her and released the fish without a picture once more. After I was finished setting up my rod, we shifted a little further upstream and hit another section nearby. I instructed Jay to where he needed to run his drift and waited in anticipation. It took a while, but eventually his float went down with authority. I was sure that this was a good fish as it just went crazy! Long runs with violent headshakes were followed with 180-degree turns and charges straight back at us at rocket speed. This fish was pissed! Just when I thought things were calming down and we were getting to a position where we would eventually be able to land this thing, it happened. The fish shot upriver then down almost at the same time and over a deep ledge, all the while never slowing down. Something had to give and it was the leader as the rock edge cut the line. The not knowing is always the worst and we had no idea how big this thing actually was. All I know is that at this time of year, the fish usually don’t act that way unless they’re huge. It definitely would have been nice to get another pic of just one more and that was the one. I made a few more casts with Jay before we called it quits and landed another skippy chromer of about 3 or 4 pounds. This was to be the last fish as we were ready to roll. It had begun to snow quite heavily a little earlier and I knew the drive home wouldn’t be easy. All in all it was a great trip with Jay finally learning why I go back time after time in pursuit of these beautiful fish. He got to play with 8 and managed to land 6 of them the first time out. That’s enough to make him want to go back! I know I will be there as well.

Back out I went once more when I saw the water levels lowered, after a long series of high water days. The fish were going to bite, I thought! I arrived on the river around noon the first day and was into a beautiful, dime bright bullet of a fish on my second cast. This was going to be another one of those days I thought as I soon released the 10-pound female chromer! Unfortunately, that was all there was going to be in that area and I moved on. I spent the rest of the day jumping from hole to hole and picking up 4 fish by days end. The second day wasn’t much different with another 4 fish being the best I could manage once more. One fish however, gave me quite a battle as I had to relive a grueling battle almost identical to the one Tom had on the last trip. This fresh steelhead had no intentions of letting me land her as she headed down river, spooling line from the center pin reel at an unbelievable rate. Seeing as how this was the exact same area that Tom got spooled, I didn’t have much faith in winning this battle. Amazingly, I did manage to win though and was rewarded with another 10 pound silver bullet. She must have come up from the lake overnight I thought as I quickly photographed & released her to battle another day. The fish may have been few & far between, but the average size was definitely bigger on this trip. They were mostly in the 8 to 12 pound range and incredibly stronger in this higher water level. The third morning was a little different with the wind being the toughest battle I was to fight today. It’s never easy fishing a float with winds gusting at 30 MPH. There’s really no control while trying to present the bait naturally to the fish and today was going to be a challenge. I actually had to use the bends & islands in the river to shield me in certain areas. I figured I would take advantage of the situation and do a little exploring in new areas of the river. I was rewarded with a couple of fish from places that I never knew existed. A third fish came from another area that had never produced even a single hit in all the times I had tried fishing there. This was an amazing fresh 12-pound female steelhead that fortunately never left the pool she was in. She did however; travel up & down the entire area several times, giving me a ten-minute battle. With the weather changing from freezing rain & snow, I released this fish without being photographed. Setting up the camera with the tri pod & timer just takes too long when the conditions are miserable. This was to be the last fish as I was about to pack it in & head home. The weather was getting worse and the temperatures were falling throughout the day with snow & freezing rain in the forecast. All in all a pretty good trip with every fish having to be worked for! A total of 11 fresh steelhead were caught ranging from 8 to 12 pounds. Once again, I can’t wait to get back!!!!

Well as luck would have it, today was even warmer than yesterday! Temperatures were to get into the 60’s with overcast skies and warm winds of 10 to 20 knots from the S/SE. Warren was taking advantage of these crazy temperatures and joining me for his last bass fishing day, for this season. The weatherman called for showers all day but thankfully was wrong again. Most of the day we fished in almost T-Shirts as we both enjoyed the Florida like weather of November. What began slowly was soon to change as Warren finally hit into a small concentration of good smallies. In 4 casts, he had 4 fish and all were above 3 pounds. Weed beds along rock piles once again produced some decent sized smallmouth bass on tubes. In one location, we found larger bass in the 4 pound range, but were forced to move when the rain and winds kicked up making it too difficult to hold there. As strange as the weather was, the fishing remained great all day. We had several squalls come in on us with high winds and showers, but never really got the worst of the weather until the last 20 minutes of the day. We both realized how lucky we were to have spent such a warm day on the water for the last day of November by milking it for everything it had. We held out until it was just too close and then bolted for the boat dock. I knew we were in for it as I turned and headed into the blackest of skies I had seen in quite a while. We were greeted with higher winds and heavy rain for the last of our run back to the truck. I was glad that we stuck it out for as long as we did as there were probably 15 or 20 fish caught in the last hour of the day. Warren even landed a bonus Walleye of over 7 pounds. This was his personal best too!! Overall, there were about 60 or more smallmouth bass caught up to & over 5 pounds. I hope this is not the end to my season as the fishing is still going quite strong. If the weather holds out a little longer, I might get out a few more times before I call it quits for this season and concentrate on the steelhead fishing. All in all a super day of fishing for smallmouth bass!!

Darren was to accompany me to a local lake in pursuit of jumbo fall smallies today. He had experienced these fat, fall footballs before and was looking foreword to getting into more of them. As luck would have it for the end of November, the air temps were to reach into the 50’s with sunshine and no wind. Water temps were almost 50 degrees and climb throughout the day. Within the first 5 minutes, there were a couple landed and a few others lost. We moved all around trying to locate a mother load of bass and caught a few every where we went. Bass of 3 to 5 pounds were the norm and an occasional walleye as well. The best areas were located on rock piles with some weeds adjacent. Depths of 4 feet to 30 feet held fish with the better areas once again being 14 to 20 feet deep. Tubes were also the lure of choice as these fish were feeding on crawfish as well as minnows. Certain areas held better fish and larger concentrations but by making long casts and covering water, fish were caught all over. There were no real giants today, but 50 or more bass fell victim to the tubes with the largest ones going just over 5 pounds. All in all a great day with unbelievable weather for this time of the year.

I thought I would try again today to locate the mother load of smalies and decided to hit the lake with my brother. He hadn’t fished with me since early in the season and had never before been out this late in the year for smallies. The day was quite similar to yesterday except for the lack of sunshine. Instead, we had overcast skies throughout the entire day. I decided to start in the area that produced the best fish late in the afternoon yesterday and gave Mike first crack at the spot. I had told him that he would hook up on his first cast and obviously had forgotten who I was dealing with. It took him several casts to finally get bit and of course, he lost that one. Eventually, he locked up and landed a real nice one around four pounds. I didn’t even put it in the live well as I was sure there would be plenty more much larger to follow. The fishing was a little slow to get started as we only landed around 10 or so in this area and I moved on. Just like yesterday, there didn’t seem to be too many concentrations and we had to cover water to get bit. Some of the hits were so light that they were almost impossible to detect. It almost felt like there was weeds on the jigs as they just picked up the bait and held on. Fortunately, not all the fish were acting this way and others were easier to detect. A few fish came from as shallow as 6 to 10 feet of water and others were in the usual areas of 14 to 20 feet. We even caught a couple that were closer to 30 feet deep as we covered all the usual holding areas, looking for bigger & better. Mike managed to hook into what I thought was a real giant, only to find out that it was a Northern Pike just under 10 pounds. There were plenty more smallmouth hooked and landed as we neared the end of the day. I decided to make one more stop on the spot we began on and fished it for about 30 minutes more. Unfortunately there were only a few hits in that time and only 3 fish landed. I did manage to bring one aboard that weighed in at just under 5 pounds and my brother caught a nice one on his last cast too. Overall a pretty good day with about 30 fish landed in a five hour period once again. This fishing is definitely not over yet as I will be back several more times before the temperatures drop so low that it becomes an impossibility. It looks like this year I will be fishing into December, with all the mild weather we have had lately!!