Anthracite Outfitters trip summary and report: 10-10-09 to 10-11-09

You can read the Anthracite Outfitters report here at the Anthracite Outfitters KayakFishingStuff Blog.

Fishtank Hank wrote:

"The Fall bite is in full swing. We launched Saturday afternoon, fished, set camp, fished, and fished all day Sunday. We had our friend Jon Adams out with us as well.

The weather was cooler and we launched on the backside of the front that came through. The water is still crystal clear even with a slight bump in volume. I started off with a spook and stuck with it the whole trip. The trick was to get into current areas where the boulders and big rocks are in a 3' to 6' column, also the shoreline drops adjacent to deep water that have the longest sunlight exposure this time of year, and best of all the moving water tail outs where a cast almost onto the shore was employed. Once the spook hit it had to rest for 5 to 10 seconds. Then it was a 1-2-3 slash cadence to the spook with another pause. Usually the pause was short lived as an explosion usually occured. If the fish missed, just pause and start the spook up in a choppy walk and the fish was right back after it.

I can't stress enough the importance of letting it rest "til the rings clear" and the pausing the retrieve on the spook and just letting it drift or sit. 90% of the fish hit the spook while it just sat there. Keep in mind I was throwing a regular zara spook that has a loud rattle. So while it appears to be there quietly, when it is drumming on any semblance of chop, either created by wind or current action, the rattle is clunking, putting out the vibe. It's also a good sized meal for a smallie with fall inspired feed bag on. EddyRider saw this first hand when he missed a swipe from a BIG bass.

Jon was also putting fish in the yak. He was working his go to soft plastics, both finesse style and twister tails. He had his groove on by working low in the column.

All in all it was great fishing with some areas holding good concentrations of fish to the point you could have worked and reworked the area all day and caught, if you didn't need to pull 10 miles down stream.

The aesthetic of the season is in full swing as well. The mornings are cool and misty and envelope you in fog. Then the sun burns it off and the multi-hued leaves show a robust saturation of warm tones in the full sunlight.

The only drawback is the daylight is getting less and less.
The upside is that the walleye should get into full swing soon!!!"

Tight lines and safe paddlin'!!!

FishTank