Home Forums Fishing Freshwater My favorite fishing trip

The following story happened to me a few years ago. More recently I wrote it down to share with some youngsters. Thought a few of you may enjoy reading it. Sorry it is a bit long. I hope I never get too old to forget what happened that day!

My favorite Day

The day was overcast, and a bit of remaining drizzle fell from the sky. It had just rained, and I thought it might be a good day to try and entice the bass to bite. As was my custom, I stopped at South Side Sports and picked up some medium shiners to use as bait. I normally get 18 or 24, on this day I decided on 18. I was not sure how the fishing would be.

I arrived at the Fabri Dam as the rain tapered off and the sun started peeking through the clouds. I stood by the water’s edge and surveyed the river. I noticed some surface activity, but thought little of it. I had a crankbait already on my line so I cast it out and began a retrieve. I soon hooked into a bass, but strangely it was foul hooked. That rarely happens, and made me pause and look harder at what was happening. What I saw was every fisherman’ dream.
Maybe 15-20 feet out there was something serious gong on. There was a large group of bass in a feeding frenzy. They were ripping through a school of shiners. As they plowed through they would invariably wound some, which quickly became prey for the voracious appetites of the bass.

My heart quickened. I had 18 shiners in my minnow bucket! This should be good. I hooked a shiner, waded in the water below the action, and cast my line. I cast just above where the action was and began a slow retrieve down towards myself. I prepared for a strike for I knew that a hooked minnow was a wounded one, and made easy prey for the hungry bass. Sure enough, my 6 ½ foot St Croix rod was almost ripped out of my hands as an aggressive smallie gulped up the shiner on my hook. The battle was on!

There are many different species of fish, and different fish fight differently. But a river small-mouth, one that has spent his life fighting the currents of the river, is a very strong fish. The fish at the end of my line was approximately 14-15 inches long, and he put up a tremendous fight. But slowly and surely my rod and I wore him out, and he was brought to the surface beside me. I unhooked him, and gently slid him back into the water. The other fish seemed not to know that there was anything afoot, so I baited up again, and again cast into the commotion. As before, another aggressive smallie pounded into the bait with a ferocity that surprised me. Another fight, another fish brought to the surface. And again, and again.

Part way through the action, I paused to look off across the river. I was surprised to see the exact same feeding frenzy happening at half a dozen more places. Apparently the bass all decided to feed heavily at the same time!

I kept baiting my hook, casting, hooking a fish, fighting the fish, bringing it to me, and releasing it. It took me between an hour and an hour and a half to use up all the shiners I had. By this point I had caught over a dozen bass. All were very nice size, with 3/4ths of them being in the 14-17 inch range. I caught very few under 13 inches.

Just before I was done another fisherman came. He saw the frenzy, and immediately began casting. The problem was he did not have shiners. He just had plastics and other lures as bait. He could not raise a strike. Apparently the bass were focused on the shiners. Once my shiners were all used up, I took my pole and walked away from the river. I felt happy, for I knew what I had experienced was truly special. It was a memorable time, and one that I hope to never forget!

Good story. Reminds me of wading; no waders, khakis and tennis shoes, fishing the Shenandoah, Maury and the James in Virginia 50/60 years ago. I've fished a lot of places but those are easily some of the best days fishing. Never ran into a feeding frenzy like that but we did pretty good with hellgrammites seined before fishing that day or Mepps spinners. No question a 14/15" river smallmouth on llight or med/lt spinning gear is a quality fish. A couple of times right before dark the mosquitoes would be bad enough to where you had to keep a cigarette going for the smoke to help keep some of them off and we'd fish till dark or the fish quit biting.

Kind of reminds me of fishing Yellowstone Lake for cutthroat trout back in the late 60s early 70s.
We had a contest to see who had a lure that wouldn't get a strike.

Sounds like a neat experience.

Some 40 plus years ago on table rock lake here in Missouri I was on a fishing trip with some friends. We had been doing some night fishing and had just gotten back in for the night due to an incoming storm. Everyone went up to the cabins and I stayed behind on the dock watching the lightning in the far off distance creep closer and crack louder with time. Then in a similar event like the original post, the water went full retard with bass hitting the surface. For about 20 min I caught a bass on EVERY cast. Nothing huge but nothing under 2 lb. once the storm reached me it all went dead like a light switch thrown. I got back up to the cabin and told my story and was accused of pulling their legs. I slept with a grin that night.

This year, October 2, my buddies and I had a fantastic day. We were walleye fishing on a great lake. There 4 of us, all seasoned anglers. We got an early start and caught a lot of fish but mostly 14-15", not the 16"+ that we knew were available. 2 of my buddies couldn't take it, they started keeping the 14s. I didn't and one guy couldn't catch anything so he didn't keep any 14s either, lol. After changing colors numerous times and locations and baits, we finally the combination for success, gold with a minnow in 8' off the south weeds. The 4 I kept were all over 17 and 2 were over 18, all beautiful walleye. I gave a gold spinner to the guy who couldn't catch anything and he caught 3 good ones which was enough to make his day. He is 81, so outfishing anyone is cause for celebrating. After we were putting gorgeous ones in the boat, the others were regretting their choice to keep small ones. It was a fantastic day.

The day before that, it rained hard. We were planning to go but the rain scared off 3 guys. Not me, though. I went and got drenched. There was hardly anyone fishing, I said to one boat I wondered how many escapees from the asylum there would be. Fishing was on fire . I had a beautiful northern up to the boat when the hook came out, easily 36". They had plans to fish a lake I don't care for the next day so when I got my last fish for a limit, I sent a pic and our plans for the next day changed.