Fishing: New personal best!

 

As you may know I am a fisherman and this week I have been on vacation. I go back to work soon so I closed out my vacation by doing some fishing with my Dad and we did pretty well. We were going for catfish but mostly struck out with that. I only caught a small juvenile and had zero luck otherwise (I did catch a six pounder last Thursday, but that's neither here nor there). 

We had been catching mostly sheepheads (freshwater drum) when I got a bite on my nightcrawler rig. It was not fighting like a sheephead at all as it was up closer to the surface and even jumped a little bit. When I got it in I saw it was the above smallmouth bass. It wasn't huge or anything, 2.3 pounds around 15 inches, but it's the biggest I have caught! I've only really caught smallmouth bass since last year as I do more river fishing than lake fishing. 

Since I caught the bass I put on a blade bait that I had bought last year but inexplicably left on my kitchen counter since then. On my first cast with the lure I got a hit and I reeled it in. I was expecting another smallmouth but I got something a bit rarer instead!

That is a Sauger. Saugers aren't super common around here but I've caught them before, but it's been ages. You can tell it's a Sauger and not a Walleye or hybrid because the black spots on the dorsal fin and the lack of a white spot on the tail. This fellow was very lucky that I wasn't sure on the regulations on keeping them where I was fishing because I would have loved to have cooked him up! Instead he got released, just like the bass. 

Regardless, it was a nice day of fishing from shore and I am glad I had the opportunity to catch some fish. Fishing has been hit or miss lately and I am glad today was a "hit" day.