Finding Arrowheads and Angry Largemouth

My Dad and I have a yearly float trip here on one of my favorite rivers in Georgia. The fishing is usually never lights out, but we have a great time catching up and enjoying nature. I had spent a few hours on the fly tying Vice that week and put together my rough version of a streamer called swingin’ D. It basically acts like floating jerkbait and has been very effective for me in the past.

I would love to tell you that I landed skews of river bass on my fly rod that day, but I only landed 3 fish that day. The first was hard fighting spotted bass that couldn’t resist blasting my fly as it skated past a down tree. The next was a slimy catfish that clobbered a crawdad fly drifted between some boulders. It did not cooperate for a photo opportunity and I didn’t feel like risking a fin to my hand.

My final fish of the day made the whole trip a huge success. With less than an hour left of fishable water time, I made a cast to a bank that had surrendered nice fish on previous trips. When the fly made it halfway in to the boat I spied a dark submarine rising from the depths. A huge bass moved up to spy my bait. I kept my same, methodical retrieve as I feared changing pace would turn it away. This had a negative effect as the fish became passive and began to back away. I decided to kill the retrieve and then give it an erratic twitch. The big bass instantly nosed up on the fly and gently sipped it in and turned away. I strip set into her and the big large mouth erupted from the water putting on a terrific aerial display until I scooped her up in my net.

That one fish brought me so much satisfaction. I landed it on the fly rod, with a streamer I tied and I tricked it into reluctantly striking. We parked on a sandbar to compose ourselves and I scanned the area for Native American artifacts as I always do. I didn’t see anything obvious so I swung a foot over the side of my Kirloy and stepped on a beauty of a point! Lucky>Good.