The end sure justified the means!
SJHassan
Allan Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Allan Fish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Wonder of wonders. It was late November in Indiana. And I actually
went fishing! And actually got so warm I had to take off my
lightweight sweat shirt!
My buddy and I floated on the White River North of Indianapolis - the
same river that was 'sterilized' by a toxic chemical dumping
(intentional) from a large manufacturing plant. If memory serves me
correctly (and it seldom does any more), I believe that was about
five years ago this coming January. However, all reports have been
that it has come back and is now an excellent smallmouth fishery.
Our guide - yes we actually hired a guide - put his Hyde drift boat
(another first for me) in at "Potter's Bridge" on the far North edge
of Noblesville, a small city just North of Indianapolis.
We floated down to Forest Park, a total of about 3.5 river miles, all
basically within the suburbia of Noblesville. It was a beautiful
float on a beautiful stretch of river - park on one side and homes on
the other side for the majority of the float.
Unfortunately, there had been a fairly heavy rain on Tuesday that hit
this area and also up-stream of where we were fishing, so we had high
raging muddy water. I was highly impressed at how well the Hyde boat
handled and how comfortable it was to stand and cast (if you stood in
the casting braces). We tried many flies, Clousers, Wooly Buggers,
Thing-a-ma-jigs (the guide's creation - I don't have the pattern, but
it's basically a Marabou-bugger with rubber hackle), all very
heavily-weighted to cope with the high water. As a result, we ended
up leaving quite a few of them on snags in the bottom. When you got
snagged, the water was rushing so hard that we just had to pull and
pray most of the time. We were able to retrieve some flies in the
more quiet areas. A lot of the time you were casting from fast water
into slack water in the shallows, so you had about 10 seconds of
fishing time per cast. Which meant we were doing a LOT of casting.
After we got to the take-out point four hours later, we were still
fishless, although our arms were tired from casting the heavily
weighted flies. The guide, however, had not given up. So he took us
on downstream a few hundred yards to fish some rip-rap as well as a
couple of bridge abutments where he had been successful in the past.
Nada. Then he went over to a concrete wall that comes down to what
is normally a fishing ledge behind a bait-house. We anchored and
flung flies off the ledge for a few minutes. My buddy by this time
was really tired. This was his first time for "in-depth" fly fishing
and his arm was worn out. After he got snagged on a stump three
casts in a row he just plain gave up. About one cast after he quit,
I set my hook on the same blasted stump. But a few seconds later the
stump started shaking. Funny, I never felt a stump shake before.
After a short tussle, the guide looked at the bend in the rod and
said, "I'd better get the net." I ended up actually catching a 16"
smallmouth, which ruined our slogan of the day: "There are no
smallmouth."
We have decided that White River now does have smallmouth bass in it.
Only one, but it's a feisty sixteen incher.
Allan
--
Allan Fish
Greenwood, IN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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