Pacemaker Fishing Forum

I met David and Dr. Yu-Ping Chin (Yo) at Gravelly at 7 AM for a day of shad fly fishing. Yo, a professor at Ohio St. U, had never caught a shad before.

It was a beautiful morning.

We got to David's favorite spot and things were eerily slow. Water is clear, the shad are deeper so the cormorants won't see them flashing. Survival mode....

Yo struck 1st as he got a nice hit. After a nice battle on the 6wt, this guy shows his face.



This is a hound fish (needlefish) and they are known to come to Fletcher's like so many other anadromous species do in the spring. More pictures later, they are in David's camera.

The fishing was really slow after that, surprising David who is a shad master. So I decided to do a little jigging. I had a Specialized Baits L'il Bunker on (white) when I got stopped cold. Rats...the bottom. No, it's moving. The rod was bent over to the max and the fish was taking line. Could it be a huge striper? A fat blue cat? After a 2 minute battle...snap goes the line and all I have is an adrenaline rush. Both Yo and David could not believe what they just saw. Neither could I. This will haunt me tonight.....

So we decided to make a move up river and I take my skunk off with a white perch....



.....on a fly?

Then, I got another hit and I land a nice hickory.



And then Yo announces that he is hooked up....



His 1st shad! It's all good now!

I caught a few more as did Yo.



But David, the shad master has a zero catch rate at this point....not a happy man!

Until.....this one!



And then this one!



And then another dozen or so!



Finally, Yo got in there to break David's streak...



Since I was not catching any, I decided to jig some more using a 1.5 oz jig head with a 7" Case Plastics Sinkin Salty Minnow. A few minutes later, I felt a tic and I set the hook on a nice blue cat. It took a few minutes to get him to the boat. Once landed, we estimated his weight between 12-15 pound as he has a FAT belly on him.

Picture later!

Time was getting away from us so we drifted downriver and both Yo and David picked off a few more.

For the day, I got a few, Yo caught a little more than a few and David caught a bunch. He schooled us...again.  But we had the last laugh!



We did see a few fish caught including a mid 20's (inches) striper and heard of one American. On the way back, all the white perch holes had a boat on them.

Great day on the water!!