8-20

[Norm Minas]

now for a rare report , better late than never , I guess. lack of reports due to 18 to 19 hour days and choosing some sleep over computer time. right now have a service guy at the house dealing with cable issue so I'm not out on the river and can't grab a nap.

the river is at about 2/3 it's normal flow for this time of year per the historic records. for the last few years, it's right where it usually is, drought low. when it gets like this, it's generally best to concentrate on areas with faster and/or heavier flows like riffles and neck downs. working channel edges and adjoining flats is another good idea. slower, deeper areas are good as long as they have enough flow and are large enough that they aren't very warm spots with a much lower oxygen content. the presence of emergent vegetation also helps provide cover and oxygen, well the oxygen during the day. at night the emergent vegetation gives off carbon dioxide instead of oxygen and can cause fish to move from that spot.

the first few places I fished were riffle areas, both the head and tail of the riffle. I started with buzzbaits and got some smallmouth but nothing of great size, smaller fish in the 12 to 15 inch range. I switched to the magnum flukes rigged weightless on a 6/0 ewg hook. I let it sweep into the front of the riffle and then added a small bull shot and let it sweep across the front face of the riffle. no fish were interested in that lure. when I went to the back end of the riffle it was a whole different story. I cast the fluke weightless on top of the riffle and let it sweep down into the bottom of the vertical eddy at the base of the riffle for the most part I only got one fish per riffle but they were all in the 16 to 19.5 inch range. . Once I had that dialed in, I kept fishing the back ends of riffles with the same result, no fish or one fish but good sized fish.

I next hit an area where the current is split into a couple of channels by three mid stream humps. I had the magnum fluke on so I stayed with that and picked up a few smallmouth where the channel bumped up against the humps. I switched to a rattlebait and worked it back up against the current along the seams on the edge of the channels. That brought a few shoulder jerking strikes and fairly nice smallmouth but that didn't last long. I checked the flats around the area with a rattlebait, single spin and a j-9 floating rapala but there were no takers.

I headed down to a spot where there is a very narrow neckdown between two islands that has some good depth as well. I knew that spot held channel cats so I switched to my favorite catfish lure, a singlespin with a 5 inch twister tail. I went with a 1/2 oz model as I was planning to jig it thru the heavy flow, a tactic that has worked often over the years for cats. On that occasion it only got 2 cats but they were both good size, 24 and 27 inches.

I hit another spot with emergent vegetation laying back with the flow and a foot to a foot and half of depth in the area. I texas rigged a Berkley heavy weight worm on a 5/0 ewg hook and let it sink into the pockets between and at the ends of the clumps of weed. Thru past experience I knew I had to fish each opening as I have yet to figure out why they choose one spot over a very similar looking spot in the same weed bed. I'm sure there is a reason, I just haven't figured it out yet. By the way , a pair of polarized sun glasses helps immensely in this pattern. That got me a few more smallmouth but not as many as I thought I would. After a check on the time, I had to head upstream to get closer to where I had to pick up my daughter from school.

I fished an area with a bunch of good sized boulders sitting on top of cobblestone. I banged bandit 200's off the boulders, got a couple more smallmouth and went to go make my scheduled pick up. Every smallmouth I caught banging the boulders was on the shady side of the rock.

[ThunderStick]

Fantastic report, thanks Norm