04-25-2011, 09:00 AM
I fished Saturday and Sunday mornings. I tried a little of everything on Saturday. I caught a few smallmouth downriver and caught a fair number of small blue cats drifting shad around. I cast netted all kinds of crazy stuff, including a crappie around 2 lbs.<br /><br />The heart breaker for me was I hooked a blue that I never got off the bottom. It was a tank for sure, lots and lots of current so who knows the size. It ended up coming unhooked, and if you heard a scream of frustration, that was me. Not too many fish I haven&#39;t been able to budge off the bottom right away with the big cat gear.<br /><br />So today I just told myself that this morning I was going to load the boat with bluegill, and that was a lot of fun as I caught a ton on both wax worms and assassins. I was trying to catch a crappie or 2 but mostly just got big bluegill. Today I was going to anchor on a couple of the sweet spots and try to get back at the big cats.<br /><br />I had a rod load up, and I let it go for a long time to make sure it was hooked. I even gave it a sweeping hookset after being paranoid about the fish coming unglued yesterday. After a load of sweat/back pain/forearms burning, I got ready to net the big blue. The net nearly falls out of the boat, gets caught on the cleat, anything that could go wrong when trying to net a fish in 54,000 cfs. It was intense for sure. I grabbed the blue in the mouth to be sure it wouldn&#39;t get away as I tried to get the net off the cleat and out of the water.<br />It measured out at 44 inches and 48 lbs, a beauty of a fish. The current makes getting a big fish in really tough, but I am gaining a lot of confidence fishing the river in slow or fast current. I also like that I have the option to go catch smallmouth in between anchors, breaking up the monotony of anchoring all day.<br /><br />2 great morning trips enjoying the river. I regret I didn&#39;t net bait for smallmouth today since the wind was actually suitable for once this spring! Would have been great for drifting.<br />This next weekend my 4 year old nephew comes down for hopefully a bluegill bonanza. I am really looking forward to taking him fishing.<br /><br />By the way, I put on about 3 lbs of muscle pulling up the 30 lb anchor, makes a man out of you!