Logging Smallies in the Coosa

Recently Chris Slaughter, Adam Cunningham and I had a day of smallmouth fishing that none of us will ever forget, in a good way. This was a day in November, just before a massive amount of rain was about to raise the creek well over 15’ from its banks. We were lucky enough to be off the water hours before the sky opened up to unleash chaos on the creek.

The day started off kind of slow – a few dinks started the day, and as we know as fisherman that is not always a bad thing. Adam, who is the master of knot tying, had a few dull moments as I noticed that at least 2 of his ties turned into to a loud snap on the cast and a flying jig head that made its way off into eternity. Heck, I had the lame idea of putting in at a spot further up the creek causing us to have to get out and drag our kayaks, not just a little, but the type where you look back at the rocks behind you to see a trail of plastic curly q’s. I am sure that I was not a favorite to these guys while we were entering and exiting our kayaks many times on this stretch of water to break in our hulls a bit more.

We finally got into a more familiar section of the creek, the sun was poking out a bit and the bite really started to heat up. I made a cast into a pool just under a small rapid and got my finesse jig slammed; I set the hook and missed. I started reeling up the slack and immediately got thumped again, not sure if it was the same fish coming back for more, but I finally had nice sized smallmouth in the yak, it felt great. We soon got to a hole where we have had moments when several fish have been caught and well, you can guess how the other trips have gone.

Adam was off to my right, and I heard him say “fish on”, it was another solid smallie. Wow, two in the last few casts, amazing right? Before I knew it we all had so many nice ones caught and released it was nuts, I mean we all had at least seven to eight fish each over 18” in length, it was just nuts; and nearly all were caught within the same hole.  I reeled in what I believe was the longest smallmouth I have ever caught, but I did not measure it. I probably should have borrowed Chris’s measuring board; he was smart enough to bring one along, however I didn’t want to stop fishing long enough to go after it, at the time. We continued catching fish after fish for about 2 hours; it was a dream day to say the least. We finally had to move on down the creek so we could get to our portage spot.

Since this day I have kept a log of each fishing trip I have made, the successful ones and those not so successful. I include things like the day of the year, high/low temp, water temp, fishing spot, about how many fish were caught, my outlook on life before and after, moon-phase and how the weather is in general. I have just started looking into adding barometric pressure readings as well, and am learning more and more each trip. I like to look at each fishing trip as a learning experience to better prepare myself and others for future experiences on the water.

Get off of the computer and go fishing!!! 🙂