I finally was able to get out and make a float trip with my father. He has been floating the river with friends and catching a lot of small bass on spin tackle.
We got ont he water about 8AM. Since we had blue bird skies I was not too hopefully of a banner day. shortly after launching the raft we were quick into fish. Again mostly smaller bass and redeyes. Surprisingly the pattern for the days was a black popping bug. We caught a few on crawdad patterns and light colored poppers, but the black popper was the winner by far.
Not far into the trip we came on a grass bed with good flow next to it and a water depth of about 2 feet with some rocks through in for good measure. As soon as the popper landed from my father's cast it was sipped up by a bass. It went airborne and looked to be a solid 18". Dad said get the net, so I shipped the oars and dropped the anchor. As I was reaching back for the net he yelled muskie then he is off. I turned around just in time to see the white belly of the bass being taken down to a deep hole. Dad said the muskie was at least 40". He had a good lunch out of that 18" bass.
Then it was my time to fish. Again, it was mostly small bass and redeyes. Then I saw a large shadow in an eddie. I cast the black popper to the shadow. They bass turned and sucked it down like a brown sipping midges. He tried to dig under any and all rocks he could find. I forgot my camera but Dad took one hero shot for me.
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The rest of the day it was smaller fish up to 14". We saw a good number of other nice fish but they would not eat.
Water was low and clear.
Hopper.
