Wade, Wade,Wade

A few weeks ago my buddy and I put in a local river that is full of smallmouth bass. Our plan was to fish the main river and see what we could come up with. About an hour into our trip we had very few fish to show for it. The color of the water of the main river was a brownish tan and had 1-2 ft visibility. Not the best of conditions on this particular river. Recent rains had silted up the water a bit.

As we were fishing we came up to a creek. Crystal clear water was flowing from this creek. We paddled up into the creek and camp up to a sand bar in the middle of it. We pulled up on the sandbar for a quick break and discussed our plans for the rest of the day. We decided to check out more of this creek we were in. It was a shallow creek, so we just left our boats and grabbed a small tackle box each and 1 rod and started wading up stream.

Most of the creek was about knee deep, but every so often there would be areas of deep blue water that was much deeper. I had a whopper plopper tied on and my fishing partner had a craw on a shakyhead. The first of these holes that we approached also had a log lying in the middle of it. I chucked that topwater right along the log and as it traveled beside it, a large black shadow flew out from under it and my bait disappeared as the water erupted. A solid 19.5” smallmouth bass was the result. While I was still pondering about the fish I just caught, my buddy pulled 3 more out of the same hole. Not as big, but quality fish! We continued on to the next hole and it was similar. Several fish were chasing my bait on the first cast over the hole! We ended up wading about 2 miles up this stream and we easily caught 35-40 fish, maybe more. The largest fish was just under the 20” mark. It was unbelievable!

I had never waded a shallow creek before and man was it fun! I know several people do this, but it was new to me. The life in those small creeks blew my mind. So many fish, baitfish, crayfish, and bugs were present. It’s no wonder why the big fish are in there! I can’t wait to do more research in my area to find some more skinny water to fish!