My granddaughters (7 and 10) are arriving from the other side of the country today, and we have a tradition of going fishing a couple of times when they’re here. Perch, chubs, sunfish, the occasional juvenile bass. We used to fish under the covered bridge up the road, but the pool there is gone due to some extreme weather leading to significant streambed alterations. My alternative plan was to hike them down to the pool across the road where my son and daughter learned to love to fish, but this year the pool has held mostly 12 to 20” smallmouth (hey I’m not complaining) that seemed to have driven most of the smaller prey species away.
I hadn’t fished it for about a week, and we had heavy rain last week that would have allowed the larger fish to make their way downstream to more consistently deeper water for the duration of our short summer, so I dropped down for an hour to check on things. Knowing the kids would be worm fishing, I figured I’d better duplicate that technique to see if they would have any luck. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I have a short, light spinning rod and thought I’d give it a go. I had minimal luck with the old bobber and worm technique: caught a few chub in the moving water at the head of the pool, but nothing down in the pool. So I switched to a Hildebrandt inline spinner and worm, and on most casts, I couldn’t even get the thing to sink any distance in preparation for a retrieve before it got hit. I only had five worms with me, and managed probably 20 fish: chub, perch, sunfish, smallmouth bass. I had forgotten how hilariously effective spinner\worm can be, and lets be honest here, just how much FUN it is. Anyway, the fish are back, the girls get here soon, and I think we’re gonna have a great time.
I"ll let you know how it goes....
brent