I hit a smallie bite today on the same spot on the river. Trick was to fish a bit of a belly in the line after contacting the bottom. Give a six inch pop to the jig and let it fall and rest. The bass where inhaling it while it sat motionless, which leads me to believe these fish were actually feeding and not just reacting.
I made my first cast at 6am, and first caught the sun rising over the mountains...
I started by targeting pike/musky in a big hole/eddy, but after 5 hours of working that water top to bottom I shifted upstream to a muddy point with a smaller backflow. When I got there small pods of 1" bait were swimming tight to the shore down stream against the backflow which lead me to believe that if the bait is active in shallow so too should the predators be.
The main flow bottom is a craggy bed rock shelf but the backflow area normally has dry grass clumps with smallish bushes, which recently are submerged. So I casted my hair jig about 10yds right to the seam of the swirling main flow and the backflow. Kept it low and slow and didn't take my eyes off the belly. Sure enough first cast and this chunky girl came up at 11:45pm...
I hit another on the next cast. After that the wind kicked up blowing down current and started dragging the jig due to the belly that needed to be there to keep out of the snags. The jig needed to hop but not be dragged or it would hang up. So I went to a larger head and a 4" motor oil/ black fleck twister tail grub. Money...
All in all today I landed 6 smallies in tight and had a number of short strikes due to the wind reducing the feel in my line, which I think the hits were actually walleye nibbling. It was a beautiful day and made better by the fact that the smallies here in the North Branch of the Susquehanna river are feeding in the sun at lunch time.
The river is dropping. I should be out in the yaks within a week.
Tightlines safe paddlin'!!!
by Metzger » Fri Mar 19, 2010 8:40 pm 
