My Favorite Fishing Story

cornshucker posted on January 27, 2008 15:52 :: 2537 Views

It was a normal early Spring morning at the campground next to Big Bend Dam, 45 degrees at 8 A.M. no need to get up earlier for some reason the fish never start biting good 'til around 9 A.M.

We fixed a little breakfast on the gas stove in the 'little' but mighty 1970 Winnebago Scout that had been making this these trips for over 20 years and still ran like a top, 77,0000 miles on this old girl and over 60,000 had been to this very spot.

We arrived at the what we called the shoreline it is a small cut out of the down side of the tailrace waters from the damn, always produces walleyes, white bass, and a night 5 to 6 lb. channel cats above us to the left is an aluminum pier with handicap accessible fishing if someone should need it but most of time it is for the more elderly folks that can't and shouldn't crawl around on the rocks that cover the banks on both sides of the damn.

The pier will figure into this story much later into the evening.

Our day of fishing went well except most of the walleye we caught were under 15" and had to go back but we caught a few nice cats, 2 smallmouths, and 10 large white bass.

A storm was predicted for the afternoon so we headed back to camp to catch a nap and clean the days catch, the storm never showed but it was very overcast and we hoped that this front would ignite a bite so as evening approached we headed for the 'pier' because of the weather forecast no one else was anywhere to be found.

As we settled into our foldout chairs and started to bait hooks.........with a very simple set-up, 20lb. PowerPro an interlocking swivel a #2 snelled hook for nightcrawlers and a #4 for minnows, and 2 to 3 large split shots 18" above the base of the hook, yep fishing on the bottom no jigging just throw it in and wait.

Tonight 'wait' was not to be in the vocabulary of any fish in the area, we each casted out our two poles alternating minnow, nightcrawler, minnow, nightcrawler to see what the flavor of the evening would be.

It wasn't long and my pole bent against the railing of the the pier, hard enough that I had to catch it as it rose up off the deck, 3 lb. channel, 'nice' on a crawler, my girlfriends father had a hit on his pole at almost the same time, a clone to my cat both on crawlers.....so we had that much figured out, we re-baited and threw back into the darkness, and then the minnows hit, a white bass for GF's dad and a nice 18" eye for me......okay its worms for the cats and minnows for the eyes and bass.

I'm not even getting a chance to sit down cause I'm re-baiting and putting fish on the stringer, so we just starting throwing the fish on the pier, cat after cat an eye here and there and a white bass every once and a while.

Then the night took a turn that neither one of us expected, as I was reeling in my minnow to check it, my crawler pole took off as I was fighting the crawler rod, the minnow rod took off.....I tucked the minnow rod under my butt and proceeded to reel in a 5 lb. channel cat and added him to the deck that by this time you had to literally push fish out of the way with your feet to get to the bait buckets.

I then concentrated on the minnow pole and landed a good 2 1/2 to 3 lb. whitey, re-baited the worm rod and threw it out and just after I hooked on a new minnow I had a thought (I knew the water under the pier was about 4 feet deep and I wondered)...............so I opened the bail and let the minnow drop straight down......when it hit bottom....2 cranks of the reel....and...BAM big white bass, another minnow same thing....BAM another bass...........needless to say the worm poles got reeled in and we began to walk the edge of the pier 'jigging' our minnows and in 30 minutes had 31 great white bass, just then a cold wind blew from the opposite direction that it had been all day, just like that the bite stopped and you could feel the moisture coming.

I threaded fish after fish on to the 12 ft. stringer and we stuffed a 5 gallon bucket full of white bass, loaded up the van that was forty yards away....... then to the cleaning station...we made it, now it is 2:30am and the electric fillet knives are just getting un-cased and the real work begins.............10 minutes in a torrential downpour descends on the station we crowd ourselves to the side the rain is not hitting and for 2 straight hours we filleted fish with rain pouring down all around us, it is a great feeling when you fill two 1 gallon freezer bags with just white bass, and don't have to worry about squeezing out the air since we were lucky to get the bag closed.

It was 4:30am and the last bag of backbones and guts was going to the dumpster, the rain had stopped and we headed for the Winnebago, stowed the fish, drank a cup of coffee, and drifted off to sleep as the sun rose through the back window of the Scout, a day/night I'll never forget and one that will probably never be repeated.