Someone was already parked at Orchard Road when we got there and in the water. I always park at the canoe launch and hike up the road almost to Orchard Road. I noticed that the guy in the water was an upstream fisherman. Good for us. I don't like to cutoff another angler if I could tell which direction they're going. Bad for the other angler because casting up stream on a river will guarantee a lower catch rate. But that's my theory.
My usual path down to the river is all grown over and I couldn't find it. We had to just pick a spot and trip down the hill over downed logs. I think the river gods guided me to this spot. Washed up into a downed tree one step into the river was a river god. It was like it was placed there for me to find. I'm a little leery of river gods. The last one I had brought me nothing but bad luck. That changed when I stood on the shore a year later and threw it as far as I could. But that's a different story.
I convinced Matt to head across the river and comb the north shore while I combed the south shore. We would then meet up at the beginning of the first island and fish the stretch behind them. Matt later reported that he had only one hit, otherwise the stretch was devoid of fish.
I picked up two dink smallies sitting in the fast water on a current break. This stretch has a large pool between the break and the shore with a lot of chunk rock sitting along the shore. A nice hit got me a spawned out skinny 16 inch smallie that looked like it had seen better days. Pretty scarred up and it showed the lip tear on one side from being caught by an angler that was probably using treble hooks. That's one of the reasons I don't use lures with treble hooks. They can damage the hell out of a fish.
I made another cast along the rocks and had a big swirl appear behind the lure, but missed. A couple of casts later near the rocks and I had a hard hit and run that doubled over the medium weight rod I've been using. It takes a lot of effort to do that to this rod. A brief two second fight and it was gone. That was it for the rocks, not another hit. Back out on the current seam I had another hit and figured it was a slightly larger dink that thought it was a monster.
A small drum is what it was, that thought it was a big smallie.
That was pretty much it for me for the day. Matt and I did a pretty good job of combing the shoreline behind the islands. I was able to get a couple of hard hits, but no takers.
Matt on the other hand caught 3 catfish that hit like smallies. They kept getting a little bigger as we went. They were hitting while he was floating his lure around in water that was approaching 4 feet deep. And another must have been sitting in knee deep water.
Somewhere in here Matt caught a dink smallie, but it was so much of a dink that he decided it wasn't worth the picture.
The biggest catfish of the day was probably the cleanest looking catfish I've ever seen caught out of the Fox. Usually they look beat up or have the black marks of parasites on them. I considered keeping this one for a catfish taste test, but I had forgot my stringer back in the car. That's too bad. Since the water hasn't got unbearably warm yet, I have a feeling this one may have tasted pretty good.
This next shot is straight out of the camera of Matt holding the biggest of the cats caught. If you did no cropping to the image, this is what it would look like. Doesn't make the fish look all that impressive.
I always try to crop photos, especially of anyone holding a fish. If you get in a little tighter with the cropping, it not only gives you a better focus on the fish, it starts to give you a better idea of the size of the fish.
At this point Matt pretty much had to get going for a Memorial Day cook out. I considered staying out longer, but there were storms blowing up all around us with thunder rumbling off in the distance. Black clouds were on the horizon even though it was relatively clear overhead.
Then I remembered the river god tucked into the back of my wading vest. I remembered the bad luck the first river god had brought me. I had already hooked myself in the back today, something that had never happened before. Luckily it had just knicked the skin, but I had to to put a hole in one of my favorite fishing t-shirts in order to get it out. Not that I believe in this nonsense, but I just had something happen that had never happened before. Then I started thinking about how I've never been hit by lightning before.
Not a chance I was willing to take. I went home. The river god has to prove itself first.