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another small male which recently have been pretty typical so far.
My dad wanted to try something new. Aside from the norm of throwing the jigs like the rest of us do he saw our friend harry out performing everyone on a fly. Throwing it on his spinning rod with a split shot to get it out there. He often has some crazy ideas for flies, but he doesn't know how to tie, so he takes me down to Bass Pro to buy the materials for it and then I tie them for him. This was what my fly ended up looking like.
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It ended up working too. Throughout the night he ended up landing 7 on that fly. Kind of a success for me too knowing my flies catch fish. One day I'll have to actually put it on the end of my fly rod and get some shad that way.
Later on in the evening around 1800 a bunch of other friends came out to meet me so I waded out further from knee deep to just above waist deep to make room for some people. Right after I did this I stopped getting bites. I was thinking did that little amount of depth really make that much of a difference? Well lets find out. I put my split shot back on and sure enough 1st cast I stuck a nice one.
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My first Female of the season, I even put her on the scale and she weighed in at 3 1/2lbs. After that almost everyone start busting some hogs over the next hour another 10 biggens like this one came out of the water between all of us along with a few other smaller males.
We stayed until 2030 looking for the stripers to show up, come on the females are here now where are those big boys were looking for??? They didn't show up though. I ended up with over 10 fish and mostly everyone else did just as good. Didn't see any spawning activity from the shad yet either. Its gonna happen soon though. Weather just needs to warm up. What happenes the next day though??? rain, of course.
I went fishing anyways though. After spending some time with the Girl Friend I dropped her off at home and ran back out to the river. I've tried to get her out there with me, but she doesn't find shad fishing as exciting as poke poling for eels for some reason. Plus with rain in the forecast and having to wade in fairly cold water she wasn't much into it.
On the water at 1600 today met my friend Jackie in the parking lot. Jackie is the best he came with pizza and sushi to feed us. Man o man was it good too, if nothing else I sure as hell am gonna eat good even if the shad don't want to. We walk down though and as I grab a slice of pizza Jackie nails one on his first cast. I hurry on down there to try and hit the same school but they were gone by the time I got in the water. Daryl came down 10 mins later to join the action. Over the next hour I only get one bite and Daryl manages to land 3. He is using a split shot I'm not, mama raised no fool I add some weight first cast fish on!!!
I don't know what it is but some times I need the weight sometimes I don't damn picky ass fish. Not as many big ones today, but we were still catching fish thats all that mattered. Later on my friend Brian Wilson (a.k.a. Beach Boy) came out with his girl friend Jessie. Jessie is still new to fishing and had some difficulty casting in the wind. She was telling me how last time she came out she ended up catching a stick. I told her I would be impressed if she could catch a round river rock like I've seen my dad do once before.
and what happened? an hour later she did it.
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I had to give her a high 5 after that, she actually hooked and landed a rock. Something I can say I have never done myself nor seen many people do. She even said she was so proud of it she threw it in the bucket and was taking it home, hahaha.
After 1900, the time fishing normally turns on, the bite completely shut off. The sun went down, it got cold and so did the fish. I'm assuming with the weather we had today with didn't want to bite when it got too cold for them. I remember the same thing happened on similar weather condition days last year. The fish will bite all day but not in the so called "magical hour" on poor condition days. I stuck it out till 2030 again for only 1 fish within that time. Ended up with close to 10 fish, not as many as the previous day, but still awesome.
It will be a while before I get out for shad next, I'm taking a vacation up to Oregon with a friend for a week, hopefully I can give you guys a nice report or two from up north. I know they got shad up there too. I think I'm going to be looking for some small mouth action though. I'll have my shad rod just encase though
Till next time
Mark
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