First River Float Fishing Trip Of the Year 2012

The weather was perfect, the water was flowing nicely, and most importantly... the fish were biting. This weekend the conditions were perfect for a float trip. When I proposed the idea to my friends the enthusiasm was through the roof. If you have read my other recent fishing hubs you might know that I've been very impatiently waiting for this opportunity to present itself and that I am really in to small mouth bass fishing. I fished from the bank of the small creek behind my house both Thursday and Friday. I caught a few fish but nothing overly impressive. Saturday however was another story.

For those of you that may have stumbled across my hub "Picking a Kayak for River Float Fishing.", you might know that during the cold of winter I was carefully contemplating which kayak would be right for me this year. After much deliberation I settled for a Pelican Sit On Top Fishing Castaway 116. Since purchasing the kayak a few weeks ago I've had a few chances to put it in the water and play around a little. This weekend was the first opportunity I've had to take it on an entire float trip. It sailed marvelously well, and I would give it 10 stars for floating and fishing both. A couple weeks ago we had hard rain for several days, and even now the water is up and moving pretty quickly. I took the opportunity to plow right in to the rough spots to see how my new vessel would perform. It handled everything I could throw at it, and I never once found myself in a precarious position.

For the first part of the trip we didn't have any luck fishing. It may have simply been due to the water moving too quickly in the spots we normally fish. I'm not positive, but we certainly weren't having much luck out of the gate. The trip was wonderful none the less, and nobody was complaining about not catching anything. Toward the end of the trip we stopped in a deep pool where we always like to fish and swim. My good friend and fishing buddy Pat was the first to get a good one on the line. He had the poise of child with a new toy. I smiled and offered to grab my camera, but before he could land it the small mouth jerked off the hook. He plowed in after it but it was no use. Everyone was disappointed for him, which we displayed by denying that we ever saw his catch. Retorting obscenities at us he went back to fishing and promptly caught another decent sized small mouth. This time he got it landed and I did get a picture but his hand gestures toward the camera man are slightly inappropriate. Yes I was the camera man.

My only catch in this spot was a small long eared sun fish that was not picture worthy.

We moved on down stream but still weren't having much luck. We were getting pretty close to home and the rest of the group was almost there, but Pat and I were bringing up the rear. Pat was still up stream from me so when I saw a decent sized root ball I decided to check it out and wait for him to catch up. I was presently surprised when on my first catch I landed a good sized small mouth bass. I grabbed a few pictures of him and set him free. I continued fishing this spot while I waited for Pat to catch up. It proved to be my wisest decision all day and I was catching a fish almost every time I cast. Eventually Pat caught up to me but we continued fishing this spot for an hour or more, and I caught several worthy fish. By this point I was using live worms and the fish were hitting like crazy. It had the look of a good spot because it was fairly deep on the back of the root ball with a strong stream running along the side of it. In my experience these are often the best places to catch numerous small mouth. I captured pictures of all of the decent sized small mouth I pulled out of this little spot.

Every fish pictured in this article was caught by me on 3-31-2012.