River Monsters ...Who needs Jeremy?

Monster Mouth Bass -- Scott tied that Kreelex fly

Not wanting to invest an entire day fishing (ok, we wanted to, but we value our marriages) Scott and I headed to our neighborhood bass-creek Saturday morning.  We didn't bring the canoe and planned on wading upstream then downstream then fishing back to our entry-point to complete the outing.  The water was low, gin-clear, pleasantly cool on our old knees, the sky was overcast...perfect.  We thought that the lower water would cause the largemouth to congregate in deeper pools, but there were still many of them that were chasing minnow schools through the shallows.

Note the white-wanker (aka, Shannon Streamer) fly..it was a killer

 At one point (always wary of the ever possible snake) I wheeled around to a noise and saw a bass (ala a striper or blue fish) drive a  school of minnows against the bank and actually flip 2-3 minnows 6 inches up the muddy bank!  They flipped over a couple of times and landed back in the water. Amazing.  At closer inspection I found that the bass doing the herding was only 7-8 inches long.  We both enjoyed using the underwater camera and took some great shots.

River Monster

The most fun was team fishing, on one occasion I caught a sunfish and it's thrashing-runs against my retrieve caused other nearby bass and sunfish to sympathetically LOSE THEIR MINDS. I called Scott over and he cast into the fray and hooked one of the nicest bass of the day.  Scott out-fished me today, especially on bigger bass where he made a KILLING on a friend-tied 3-inch, white-wanker, weighted-fly (also known as the Shannon Streamer) that bounced off the bottom and got the larger bass' attention.  Scott's biggest bass, one we've seen before but never caught, albeit Conor hooked him last trip, was a real trophy, and, as is our practice, we returned them all to their holes, treasures to be hooked again another day.

Well...at least I take good Photos!

Orvis Access Large largemeouth