Havn't posted in this thread for a while, but it's been a rough July, not a lot of action and the actions we ARE getting is from fish that are turning out to be incredibly lazy, for example, last week another of my friends got his license and we fished the dam Weds, Thurs, Fri and aside from a handful of small Flathead cats in the 22-26" range, I got a 31" w/ a 19.25" girth that literally just ate my sunfish and SAT THERE for God-knows-how-long. The only reason I even caught it was because 2 hours went by without a bite, so I checked my lines, setting the hooks before reeling as a safeguard - thought I was snagged and then my "snag" went 20 feet in the other direction. SOOOOOOO hot even the fish don't want to fight. All in all I think we got 6-8 Flatheads total, my friend's was largest at 33", w/ a 19.75" girth and around 16lbs.
Earlier Wednesday I ended up catching an 18", 3lb Smallmouth while I was fishing for BAIT lol I wasn't there for Bass, but after I had a bucketful of sunfish for Flatheads later, I saw a nice pair of post-spawn Smallies so I figured "WTH" and tossed a whole nightcrawler at them and about 3 seconds later I had one of them hooked. Good fight, but I wish it would have been on an UL.....I had a med-light Lightning Rod I just bought I wanted to test it out and I still technically only had 4-lb mono, but I'm done catching Bass on anything except Ultralight gear, it's just not as fun.
Went to another spot on the river where a cold-water stream empties into it Sunday w/ 2 friends and we got a channel cat right as we got there at 6am, but then everything was dead-still when the heat started setting in, couldn't get anything to hit on live bait - no sunfish, creek chubs, suckers, not even Hellgrammites, so I eventually started tossing crankbaits and got a 13" Smallies, and for the next 2 hours I basically cycled through every lure in my vest to see what I could get them to hit. Ended up getting a few on a Beetle-spin w/ a chartreuse Spring grub w/ a lead-head, a bunch on the Rebel teeny-wee Crawfish (natural) and finished w/ a small Mepp's Aglia weighted w/ a 1/8 oz split-shot to keep it running deep. Bagged 13 Smallies that day, in the 8-11" range, but only that 1st one was a "keeper" (even thought I don't keep Bass).
2 weeks ago we did the same spot at the dam and got mixed bags of Flatheads and Channels up til almost lunchtime, but this was before the water REALLY heated up, now it's about 80-85F regularly and I hate it. The Channels don't seem bothered by it too much, they put up a better fight than I'd expect. We got some pix, i'll post 'em when the guys send 'em to me
