Big Boys Came To Play

[sandmannd]

I got a text from my good friend River Dan last night asking if I was up for fishing early in the morning. I take care of my daughter Lizzy during the day so asked her what she thought about getting up at five and go fishing. She lit up pretty good and was really excited. My wife just shook her head at us.

So we got to bed kinda early and and got up really early. We stopped at a gas station for some snacks and made our way down to the launch. On our way down 61 Dan called. He had an issue with his truck and had pulled of the highway. We met him and I asked if he wanted to call it, he said "nope, we're going fishing". LOL. So we hooked the boat to my truck and headed to Prescott.

We were the first ones there and got out and on the water pretty fast. Lizzy grabbed her rod and was raring to go. She was actually fishing before I had a line in the water!







Well, we got moving around a little and Dan nailed a nice big male. He and Lizzy wanted to share in the reward!





He followed this up with another quick stick and an eater size in the boat. We maintain a strict slot on ourselves of not keeping any fish over 20" and generally only keep 16-18" fish. He then followed that up with a shorter male that went back in.

Do you see a pattern forming here? Have you read anything yet about me catching a fish? No? Well that's because I sucked today! I had a couple of hits but just couldn't get the commitment or much to bite for that matter. You know it's bad when your dang five year old yells at you "Dad, look at your rod" and when you glance over she says "just kidding" and then laughs at you!

Picture taken by Lizzy after making fun of me!


Well, Dan continued his clinic with two more 24" eyes, one that was full of eggs.





We did take a break to get Lizzy my extra pair of warm gloves and a blanket and saw the commercial fisherman getting ready to head out. You can also see how high the water is at this point.



To say the water is high and fast would be an understatement. Though the fishing can be great this time of year, if you aren't familiar (actually very familiar) with the river please don't go down to "try it out". River Dan has spent 200 days a year for the last 10 years or more on the river. I don't have that much experience but put in around 100 days a year for the last six. I trust myself and I trust Dan handling a boat right now. There's a few others I know that I would climb in a boat with. But I see some that shouldn't be out there now and could run into some problems. If you do go down, wear some type of flotation.

Silver sparkle jigs with blue oyster ring worms were the big ticket today. Dan did get one off a Walleye Assassin as well.

[Mayfly]

Cool pics and great post. Thanks for sharing!!