We got to 'The Hoff' at 0600 and started pluggin' away.
I had a blow up on a pencil popper right about the time I heard Ted talking with some Game Warden in camo...
As the warden approached, I realized the 'warden' was actually a civilian, and not just any civilian mind you... but our very own Brother Hookster.
I think he took a pic of me in my Lil Red Riding Hood outfit.
It was a tad cold in the shorts...
I saw no more auction.
Hook got spanked on the spoon by a steelhead or two.
I walked downriver and when I looked back, Jason had vanished.
Ted and I worked it for another 1/2 hour for nada so we bailed to one of his fav'e spots between Watt and Howe.
The game was fucking on! and the players were burly...
Ted got a 35#+ on a Bomber.
I couldn't buy a bite on any color pencil popper so I found my old friend (Steelhead Sporty Spook) and went to work. Pretty immediately, I nailed a 25# bass and got her in for the photo shoot.
Short and FAT sows have been the rule lately... Seems the girls are 'Hoe-Town Buffeting it' for the encroaching Winter. We ARE going to have a Winter, right?
I didn't have pliers so I had to use my small scissors to pry and cut a 1/16th inch flap of cartilage from her mouth to get the hook free. It worked and she swam off like she owned the place.
I moved down river a bit and continued walking the Sporty Spook. I got boiled on and blown off. Casted again, blown up again and blown off again... WHOA! she's BACK!! Sporty got hammered twice, three times and then... FOUR FUCKING TIMES later she was on and I set the hook three times to make sure I kept her there...
I fought what was an EASY 40# brooder-bitch striper for 4-minutes (a very long time for a plug to hang in an angry striper's jaws...) and I WAS DENIED! The hook came back to me with 1 out of 3 prongs straightened on each of the VMC trebles... Joey.... VMC's suck@!
My fault though for not swapping them out with Owners.
I put my trusty Zebra-striped pencil popper on just to switch things up a bit. I stuck a small (8-9# striper).
It got quiet for about 1/2 an hour. I had a smoke, collected my adrenaline and moved 100 yards downriver. Sporty seemed to be the choice of champs today so I retired the custom Cot'-Cordell and put the wood back on.
First cast yielded a healthy 18# fish.
I went home with no blood on my hands and feeling quite content.
This time of year... stripers are more sensible than humans...
They are cold, they sleep in. The bait is hiding, they wait until the sun warms up the air and water and brings breakfast to 'the table'.
I, on the other hand... opted to skip breakfast and go out at o-dark thirty to play with myself in the cold for three hours while the stripers sat there on the bottom of the river laughing at me and my cold, fog-blowin' surface lures...
Just goes to show that...
Persistence pays out to even the most foolhardy of Fisherman.
M
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