“I waited all winter long to feel a fish like this on the other end of my line. It was heavy, it was angry, and it struck my lure so hard that it nearly scared me out of my kayak!”
CONDITIONS:
Fishing conditions were nearly perfect Monday. Mostly sunny, no wind, and temps were in the mid 30’s - much warmer than any weekend we’ve had this year. Water in the Ohio River was muddy and cold at 34° and on a slight rise. Some chunks of ice were still present, but mostly gone. Fish were relating to ledges and hugging the bottom of the river.
REPORT:
KayakWars started two weeks ago and it has been very difficult to score any points for the tournament due to all of the ice. With a break in the forecast, I decided to switch things up a bit on Monday and go after some gar, carp and drum instead of chasing hybrids for a change. I'd be lying if I didn't confess that I was thinking about the all day, however. I hit the water around lunch time and proceeded to fish harder than I can ever remember fishing in my life. No breaks, no screwing around with gear, just 7 hours of non-stop fishing…and as a result, I caught a lot of fish.
The gar were pretty predictable, holding at 14-24 feet of water in a big sheet. It didn't take much effort to entice them into biting a very simple rig - a 4inch curly tailed grub dropped down to 13 feet, just above their heads. I ended up catching about 20 of them, slowed down only by the constant need to re-tie my line after they thrashed about and chewed it up. I also had to take a few Band-Aid breaks and seal all of the holes they were poking in my hands.
Here are a few of the bigger fish from early in the day:
:B Half-way through the day, I ended up catching one of the biggest gars I've caught to date. I dropped a blade bait down onto what I thought was a school of drum and a massive fish hit it and ran. At first, I had thought it was a striper due to how much line it was running off of my spool, but it came to the surface and shook its tail at me, revealing a huge python-like body. Gar strikes are usually pretty passive as they often tap at lures and try to wound them. Every once in a while, though, they really get a hold of a lure and take off and jump. This particular fish surfaced and did the patented alligator head shake and death roll which always makes me pucker up a bit when a toothy fish over 4 feet long is thrashing around right at the side of my kayak. With a bit of patience, I was finally able to drag the beast up onto my lap by the snout (using my mom's borrowed oven mitt, of course!). The gar ended up measuring 51 inches which broke the KayakWars record for our division by 2 inches:
The picture didn't quite do the fish justice, so I recorded a short clip:
(click for video)
As if that wasn't a good enough surprise for the day, I paddled back out to the same spot and dropped my line down and was greeted by the first fish I mentioned in my opening lines. The diamond among the rough fish. When I flipped my line out, my blade bait never had a chance to hit the bottom. I was lowering it down on a pretty tight line when I felt the “crack” of a big fish punishing it. I hadn't felt a hit like this all winter, so I was quite startled when it happened. I pulled back hard to set the hook and the fish took off downstream, upstream, and every direction in between. In my distant memories from last year, I remembered that’s what hybrids felt like and I quickly put on my game-face and focused on the fight. The fish tired after a few good runs and I was able to net my first vertically-jigged hybrid of the winter. There’s no better feeling than a hybrid strike on a tight line in my mind. Here’s the fish– not a long one, but it had plenty of winter blubber to round it out:
(click for video)
