We finished our breakfast and hit the road by 6:15 a.m. A quick stop at Sheetz for gasoline and a sandwich and we were back on the road to the river.
We were one of only two trucks in the launch parking lot. It's nice to hit the ramp when it's slow and quiet. There are a lot of ducks that hang out at the ramp and rightly so since it is duck season in Pa. These ducks are like resident geese. They hang out and are almost pet-like since they are fed by the locals.
The air temp was 62 degrees. Much better than our last trip at 46 degrees... :-) It did warm up somewhat when the sun rose. The temp was just under 70 degrees upon our return at 3:30 p.m. The water temp was 70-72 degrees depending on our location. Water level on the Harrisburg gauge was 3.63' and falling. Clarity was a good 4' in certain areas with deeper holes... nice! We had to get used to running WOT and seeing the bottom once more... :-O
Our first stop was a beautiful little rocky and grass island. It is one of my favorite first stops this year. We both tossed a buzzbait in and around the cuts of this island. "SWOOSH!" "OMG... did you see that!?" A monster bass attacked my buzzer and failed to hookup. That got our hearts pounding, fer shure!
As we fished the other side of the island, another smaller and feisty bass attacked my buzzbait. Once again, no hook up! "Swing and a miss... Strike Two!" :-(
We finally moved off the island and into the main river where I had our first hookup with a spinnerbait. It wasn't a monster, but it sure did feel good to get that ole' skunk odor out of the boat quickly.
We hit a few more on tubes before running further north and to some pronounced ledges. The ledges gave us a couple of nice fish. The first was this nice 17.75" on a green pumpkin tube (A One-Eyed Jack)...
Josh and I were fortunate to have a double hookup in one section of the ledges. Cool stuff...
As the day wore on, Josh was able to pull this pigbeast to the boat. It wasn't long, but she was a "porker".
We threw many different lures today... buzzbaits, spinnerbaits, soft JB, hard plastic JB, crankbaits, Case Magic Sticks, and of course, tubes.
We ended the day with about a dozen bass on a variety of baits. We never really got a pattern going on one particular lure. I told Josh that the pattern was... "The fish are holding to the bottom and change of lures was good."
Although today wasn't a bad fishing day, it wasn't easy either. I believe that when fishing is tough and we stay persistent in our quest to catch a bass, we become much better anglers. The easy days will always come along, but I learn so much more on those days that make me make decisions and attack with many techniques.
So, Tom... "Where did you get the Half-n-Half Title from?" Okay, it's easy... half the fish we caught today were 15 inches and above and the other half were below 15 inches.
Once again, thanks to Josh Kreider (smallieman) for putting up with this "Old Geezer!"
dadTB
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