In that short span she went from $50 up, back to break even. "Go away," she told me, "You're bad luck!" So I went off to watch some of the activity going on around the casino and to see what some of my colleagues who were with us on the trip, were up to. Sure enough, when I found her again, she was back up $50+. For the rest of the trip, I was not allowed to be too close by when she was playing the slots.
It's absolutely incredible how many times George has called me from his kayak to tell me how amazing the fishing is at that moment. Or he will call me the next day, like he did this past Thursday, to tell me how he caught over 20 keeper-size stripers the night before. "They were everywhere!" he told me. It's equally incredible how many times we've followed up such a successful individual outing with a trip together that turns out to be a "stinker." In fact, it has yet to happen, that I have been along with George for even one of those non-stop action, keepers-galore fishing adventures. This kind of thing has happened so often, that George regularly refers to me as "The Cooler."
Instead, my fishing adventures go more like this....
After George's monumental success on Wednesday night, we decided to meet at the river at about 11am on Saturday. George had to be off the water around 4pm because he had plans to go to the movies. We had some success but it was pretty slow-going. I caught 10 bass and George caught around 20. They were all schoolie size, nothing much over 20 inches, (the cooler strikes again...) While we were out, George's movie plans got cancelled and we were thinking that if we'd known that was going to happen we would have fished at night. By around 2:30, it was slow enough that I suggested we give it up early and I'd see if I could come back and fish with him again later on that night.
After a nice early dinner with Denise, I headed back to meet George at the launch site at around 8pm, thankful to get another shot. As I came down the hill to the parking lot, the light drizzle that had been coming down for the past couple hours, turned into a steady heavy rain. Ugh....I was pretty much soaking wet by the time I got my yak off the roof of the Pathfinder. I dropped my portable stern light when I was unloading it and it broke open, exposing the lamp to the elements. As I continued to load my gear, the rain slowed a bit. Maybe it wouldn't be too bad...
It was pretty much dark by the time we were on the water, but George started catching fish almost immediately. I sat twenty yards to his side and could see plenty of fish below me on my fish finder...nothing... I finally decided to move about 30 yards up river from him and after another dozen failed casts I finally hooked one. The rain started to get heavier again and I was thinking what a pain it was to have the hood of my new waterproof Eddie Bauer jacket on. The rain was pelting loudly on my head and every time I turned my head to check on George's position behind me, all I did was look into the darkness of my hood. I moved back to the east side of the river, so that I could see him more easily to my left. In the low light it is hard to gauge how close or far you are from the edge of the water. I made a cast up river and started my retrieve. Something just didn't feel right. I switched on my head lamp and tilted my head up to look at the direction my line was headed from the tip of my rod. For some odd reason it was headed upwards. I tugged on my line and sure enough, noticed the silhouette of a tree branch 30 yards ahead and 20 feet above the water moving in sync with my tugs...there was no getting it out. I had to cut the line and tie on a new jighead. Darned if it didn't take me 10 minutes in the pouring rain, with low light conditions and eyes that don't work as well as they used to without my reading glasses. The whole time, I kept hearing George shouting out, "Whoa, there's another one!" as I fumbled my way through the process.
Finally, I got it tied and on the ensuing cast I hooked up. Ok, things are right again, I thought. After landing and releasing a hard fighting 20+ inch fish, I loaded up for my next cast and.....promptly snagged my lure on my other fishing rod standing in the rod holder behind me. Are you kidding me?? I wrestled with trying to hold the two rods and get them untangled from each other for another 10 minutes as the wind picked up and the rain blew in my face. "Whoa, there's another one!!" It felt like George was catching every fish in the river while I was filming my own reality TV show for Fishing Comedy Central.
Well, finally the rain slowed a bit and I got into a groove, landing another handful of fish. Boy, they were fighting hard and George and I joked around about how they were small fish that wanted to be big. It seemed like we were out of the woods with the weather as we traversed the river towards the west heading for "the cove." Nope...another wave of heavy rain bore down on us and I wondered how long I would last in this kind of discomfort. However, we found a good school of fish and the two of us went on a good run, each catching fish on successive casts as the rain continued to beat down on us. A yelled over to George that I was going to take a shot with my other rod which I had a topwater lure tied to. I cast it out and had a big fish on the moment it hit the surface. This was a much heavier rod and it was definitely a much heavier fish on the other end. It began to tow me back out towards the center of the river. "This feels like a good fish!" I yelled over the rain to George. Suddenly, I noticed something abnormal about this fish. It wasn't running on me. No head shakes like I would normally feel. Of course not....it was a stick...it may have been the only stick on the river, but the Cooler can catch it....
After a short break on shore to take some cover under the trees and shake some of the rain water off us, we headed back out and tried to pick up the bite in the same location. There were some breaks in the clouds and we could see some stars peeking through the mist. We thought we might finally see the end we'd been waiting for in the rain. We headed for one of our favorite locations out in front of "the pipes." We traversed the river back to the Derby side and headed north in about 20 feet of water. We decided to throw our lines out and troll as we paddled. I took about 20 strokes when my rod was abruptly almost ripped right out of my rod holder. I wrestled the rod out of the holder and fought a very aggressive fish against the now outgoing current that pretty much had completely inhaled my lure but was still only in the 21-22" range. We reached the pipes and fished that area with just a few small fish to our credit. Then the wind started to pick up again and we decided to just use it to our advantage to drift back south and work the Derby shoreline on the way.
I moved about 30 yards down river from George as we tossed our flukes repeatedly into a decent size school of fish below us in 16 ft of water. Suddenly, I felt a strong strike on my lure. I was ready with a good hookset that felt like I'd just set the hook in log. This was no log though.... I got an immediate response in the form of a few head shakes and the sound of my drag singing as the bass yanked my rod towards the water and went on a short run away from me. I yelled back to George that this one had some promise, as my rod again was bent sharply towards the surface of the river. Then panic set in briefly as the fish ran directly at me and my line slackened as I couldn't reel in fast enough. "Oh no!" I shouted, "He got off!" but fortunately I caught up and found the pressure again. I switched on my head lamp as my foe came under my kayak in hopes of getting a look at it. Finally, he surfaced to my left. "He's gonna be close!" I informed George as he pulled alongside me. Three times I had him to the side of my yak and tried to get a thumb in his mouth. Three times he thrashed on me and tried to run back to the depths. Finally, on the fourth attempt, he rolled to his side and I was able to force my thumb into his mouth and yank him onboard.
Remembering the last time I had a keeper bass in my kayak that promptly managed to flop himself right out again before I could get a photo, I laid this one in the well in front of me and put my leg on top of him to make sure there were no repeat performances. I got out the hawg trough and carefully laid him on it for measurement. Thirty inches!! YES!! After some quick photos, I put him on the stringer so that I could bring him home for my brother-in-law Mark.
We did fish on for a bit, but it was not long before the rain started up again. It just didn't seem like we were going to get out of this wet trend and we were both soaked. So we decided to pack it in. By this time, it was about 12:45 am anyway. After some more photos at the launch, we loaded up and headed to Cumberland Farms for some food and ice before heading our separate ways home.
Ultimately, you just never know what's in store when you're out there on the water. That's what keeps me coming back for more. Sometimes I am my own worst enemy. There are days when I feel like I know what I'm doing out there, and other days where it just feels like I'm the center ring attraction at the circus. On this wet, cold, dark night, it was definitely a circus, but persistence won out and in the end I went home flying on my own personal high trapeze.
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Peace,
Jeff
