First Smallmouth of 2018 - February 25th, 2018

On an unseasonably warm Sunday afternoon I put my waders and went jig pitching. Within 5 minutes I landed my first smallmouth of 2018. He was 16 inches or so long. He was up shallow on a current break and scarfed up a hula grub before it could hit the bottom. I could use a whole lot more just like him.

Lost Photo - February 24th, 2018

Greg and I headed out to the Bluestone River on our first outing of 2018. The water was high and moving to quick to pick apart the areas we had came to target. As soon as we arrived the rain started. Greg hook a big musky on a tube with his third cast not even 10 yards from where we parked. I started paddling towards him and even took a picture of him fighting it. I got the musky in the net and as soon as I did the jig fell out of his mouth. The musky continued to flop around and I put the slimy thing in a head lock. I held it while Greg attempted to put the fish grippers on it. In the process of doing that he dropped a box of tackle that he had to go chase down. He got it back and go the grippers on it. He held it up for me to take a picture but there was so much fish slime on my hands that I could not get my iPhone to take a picture. I wiped my phone up and raised the camera to take a picture right as the musky went nuts and flopped into the water. As it fell into the water the fish grippers hit the boat gunnel and came off. The muskies back dorsal fin got sheered off as the went back into the water leaving us with only a keepsake of the experience. We fished two more hours with no hits or fish to speak of. Today was a warm up to start the 2018 season but you can really see we have gotten rusty over the winter. Why we did not take the musky to the bank for pictures which is standard operating procedure when dealing with muskies in a kayak remains a mystery.