I wasn't sure about my sanity, but I just had to get out and do a little
fishing saturday. Robert and I made it out and launched from Squaw lake
before sunrise. I figured we could hit some of my favorite banks before the
holiday traffic got too heavy on the river. We hit a couple of my favorite
spots in Squaw Lake before heading out on the main river to flip some banks.
We couldn't buy a bite, another fisherman around the way boated a couple
nice fish.

I decided we better hit the main river before the boat traffic and the
holidays crazies got too thick. We flipped one bank I like and got three
bites. Boated two dinks, and lost one small keeper when he wrapped up on
me. Robert didn't get a bite.

The boat traffic started to pick up and we were getting washed into the bank
pretty regular, but I decided I wanted to flip another bank on the main
channel. It was real work keeping the boat in position, but we flipped a
mile or more along that bank before giving up. No good bites on the whole
section.

I decided it was time to hit the backwaters. On a holiday weekend I figured
we would see lots of other people no matter where we went, but after we
headed into the backwaters we never saw another boat for the rest of the
day. I guess all those jet skiers, and wake boarders actually decided to
read the no-wake buoys and stay out on the river to play. It was great.
Once we headed into the backwaters it was like going out in the middle of
the week. We felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.

(Ready for the fish tale) As we headed into the backwaters I tossed a
translucent grey stick worm over to the edge of a deep hole were I have
gotten some good bites in the past. The line took off. I cranked down and
set the hook. I was using 12lb line on a medium aciton rod, so I was taking
it easy. When that bass made its first run I thought he was going to get me
back in the tulies. I got lucky and was able to swing the rod back just
enough to take up some of the line he stripped off. Robert was there with
the net, but he just couldn't get it in position. I dragged that fish upto
the boat in netting distance four or five times before I made the mistake of
letting him flip at the surface. AURGH!!!!!!! People out on the main
channel must have heard my cry of anguish. I hate to tell fish stories, but
this might have been my own personal best for the season. It was probably
around five pounds.

We hit a few more spots as we ran back up the little back water channel we
were exploring. I sight fished a small keeper by tossing my stick worm in
next to him, and then Robert tossed back to the same spot and picked up a
second smaller fish that was sititng there.

We turned off the channel and into one of the backwater lakes were I caught
another small keeper, and on our way out I saw a huge bass dive away from
the shore into a deep weedbed. I'll remember where that was for the next
tournament I fish out there.

We decided to do a little exploring. I found a channel out of the back of
another lake on a previous trip, and I decided we should go see if we could
find some more fish.

I tossed into one likely shallow water spot to see a giant sunfish zoom up
and suck the entier 5" stick worm I was using off the hook. I tried to set
on him, but the hook wasn't in his mouth. I like munching on sunfish so I
was already kind of thinking about them when we found some more all in one
spot.

We spotted a bunch of sunfish sitting on beds. Robert loves to catch
sunfish so I started thinking about what we could use. I didn't have a
thing in the boat of appropriate size. After perusing my hook box I
discoverd the smalest thing I had was a a 2/0 extra wide gap worm hook. For
bass fishing thats a pretty small hook. Unfortunately its just a wee bit
big to fit in a sunfish mouth. I scrounged through all my boxes looking for
something small enough to do the job. Robert figure he could catch some
using little bits of plastic worm. It might have worked He did catch one
on a bare hook after some others stripped the bait off of it.

Anyway, I found a good size hook for the job. I stripped some smaller
treble hooks off of a crank bait and clipped the extra points off with a
pair of wire cutters. Now we had hooks on the lines. Then came the matter
of bait. Usually I keep a jar of salmon eggs in my big boat for just such
occassions. Unfortunately my big boat is in the shop. We were fishing out
of the little Waco jon boat. Its pronounced Whacko in my house. Then I
thought about our lunch. I usually take beef sticks and cheese sticks for
snacks when I go fishing. They are tasty, and low carb. While Robert was
scrounging for broken rubber worms to tear up for bait I ripped open a
cheese stick and handed him a piece of it. It was great. We nailed them
hard, and they were excellent little sunnies. They were aggressive, and we
caught them left and right. Every one we caught was hand size or larger.
The only thing that would have made it more fun would have been to have some
light tackle. We were bass fishing though, and except for one fast action
medium power rod I use for stick worms and jerk baits all of the stuff in
the boat was medium/heavy or heavy action. We had a blast. I think we
caught about 15 of them in that first spot and then we picked up a few more
on two other areas as we headed out. We could have caught hundreds of them
if we kept to beds and backwaters, but there was no need to be greedy

It was one of the better fishing days I've had recently, and I didn't even
boat any really nice bass. We had some good action, we both caught fish,
and we had the water to ourselves. Well, until we headed back out across
the river to leave. It was nuts. It was like a very bad roller coaster
getting down the river and across the other side heading back to load up.
There were people zig zagging back and forth across the river pulling tubes
and wake boarders. There were dozens of jet skis within site at any given
time. It was crazy, but I didn't care we were leaving and we had a great
day fishing.

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