One Month Later

My friend and I revisited the smallmouth river that we floated back in July. On that float I was really happy with my Tarpon 120 kayak. On this recent float I took the new Fish Cat pontoon boat for its first taste of moving water.

I caught and released several of these fiesty fish. The first one I got was hooked on a small minnow jig using my ultra-lite spinning rod. This fish came out of a logjam to smash the jig and with the help of the current went right back in where I lost him. After leaping several times and before breaking me off this fish spit out a couple of minnows which were exactly like the plastic minnow I was using. So to make a long story short the flyrods took a back seat to the two ultra-lite setups I had brought along. I often cast jigs with my flyrods but with two spinning rods set up with small jigs I just kept casting and catching bass on the ultra lites. One was rigged with a plastic minnow and the other a fur and feather jig. Each rod caught about equally so the fish didn't necessarily need the plastics.

My friend was doing okay with his own fur an feather creations fished on his flyrod but I did really well with the jigs because the Smallmouth were hitting "on the drop" a lot of the time.

I found the pontoon boat was extremely comfortable to fish from and I could control my drift and even kick across the current to get to the other side of the river with the aid of the fins on my feet. Anyone who does not wear fins while fishing from a pontoon boat is really missing out on some quality hands free fishing. As much as I love my kayak I have to admit handsfree fishing in a river is impossible in a kayak. It was easy to accomplish on the pontoon.