Ha, Ha, Ha!
Dell caught this little 3" shad on a Spro. I told him that it takes talent to seek out and hook something so small... LOL! :)
I have only six days left until my second elbow surgery in the past year. I'm hoping to be able to get onto the water a couple of more times this week before hanging up my rods and reels for the next few months. Here's hoping rehab goes well.
Dell and I made arrangements on Sunday to hit the river today. It looked like it would be the best day this week not to have any t-storms or high humidity.
We met at his home at 6:00 a.m. because my F150 is in the shop for some body work. It's been awhile since we took his jet rig out for a fishing trip.
His jet had some trouble getting up on plane today as we were heading up river. I put my 200 lb body and my 200 lb tackle bag (LOL) on the front deck and it still was missing some punch. The motor sounded good, but the horsepower just wasn't there.
After our trip, he took his rig up to Lakeside Marine in Harrisburg for a once over. Hopefully, they'll get it figured out and he'll be ready to rock and roll.
Despite the motor issues, I still had Dell laughing as we ran north.
There was a lot of fog on the river this morning. It wasn't heavy, but it gave us decent cloud coverage for the first few hours...
I've nicknamed Dell "The Eternal Pessimist." After about 15 minutes of tossing topwater without a hit, he started in on the "We're gonna get skunked, T!" broken record... ;)
I had to assure him that I wouldn't let that happen to us. Of course, he doubted me. Maybe I can get him into the the local Optimist Club... LOL!
Once we got off the topwater lure and started throwing the lipless cranks, Dell hammered a nice 14" fatty. That put the end to the "Skunk" talk for the day... Yes!
A few minutes later he hooked into that little guy up above. I had a good laugh at that one. I told him, "Hey, a fish is a fish!"
We moved around quite a bit today and went from the Lancaster County shoreline all the way to the York County shoreline. We have used this path many, many times over the years, but it was the first time we actually did it in 2010.
Towards the middle of the river, we had back to back hook ups. I was throwing the "Ugly Bait" (Dell's Nickname for my Firetiger Big O) and nailed this 16.5" right at the boat. The way she hit reminded me of a Musky strike off a Figure 8. Hard and Vicious!
In the heaviest rock cover towards the middle of the river, I was able to hook up with a very nice 15.5" smallie. Dell caught a couple in the same general area. One came on a Rapala X-Rap and the other off a Bandit 200.
Using the "Search and Destroy Method" of a crankbait produced all but that one hard bodied jerkbait fish.
We ended the day with thirteen bass and about five followers. Not a bad summertime morning on the river and just enough action to keep us focused.
The water temperature was 75 degrees at the surface. The air temp was 65 degrees in the morning with a SE breeze. As the morning progressed, the winds shifted to the WNW. This breeze ushered in less humid air as the air temperature rose towards 80 degrees.
We had cloud cover throughout most of the morning. Somewhere around 10:30 a.m., the sun began to dominate. Dell mentioned how the time seemed to slow down a bit because of the fog/cloud cover and the low humidity. It just didn't feel like it was moving towards 11:00 a.m. like it had over the past hot and humid month.
As we were packing up our tackle and gear to head pack to the ramp, one of our bald eagles flew out from the York County hillside. What a beautiful sight!
Dad
