100 fish morning

Pumpkinseed tubes were the bait of the day

Phil with his personal best smallie 3.1lbs and 19"

I love bringing people to the river for the first time. I talk it up enough that it probably sounds like one fish story after another. After a year or so of throwing the offer out  to my good buddy, Phil, to join me for some smallmouth fishing. Everything came together last Friday. We met at 6:30 am at the downriver boat ramp, loaded the boats into one vehicle and drove the 4 miles upriver to the launch. After a few minutes of roadside tackle-rigging and unloading boats, we were off. I hooked Phil and his son Johnathan up with my "go to" spinner for the river, knowing that it usually produces a fair amount of fish. For whatever reason, it wasn't. For any other spot, the 8 or so fish we caught in the first hour would have been pretty good. Not for the river. I started going through a few different baits with limited success until I put on a pumpkinseed tube. Anyone that fishes knows when you hit on the correct bait for that particular day the fishing can jump to a whole new level. The eddy that I had been fishing, and getting skunked in for the last 15 minutes, produced 10 nice smallmouth in the following 15 minutes! I told Phil and his son what I was using and it was game on for the rest of the day! Double and triple hook ups were normal for the rest of the morning. As was a whole lot of ear to ear grins! Phil told me right after he caught the lunker pictured that this was without a doubt the best smallmouth fishing he had ever seen. For the next few hours the fish count went up so fast that Phil and his son quit counting. I was into the morning for 40 and there were times when both Phil and Johnathan were pulling them into the canoe a whole lot faster than I was. Now, numbers don't matter. The fun you have with your buds outdoors in a beautiful environment is what it's really all about. That being said the final number, and this is a conservative estimate, was around 100 fish between the 3 of us. Not bad for a morning on the river. Thanks for reading!