First Day on the Local Water for 2015

Joe and I just had to get out and enjoy some of the nice Spring weather we were blessed with this past weekend by Mother Nature. Unfortunately the same Mother Nature that gave us the sunny , warm weather around here decided to turn on the water faucet and create high water conditions on pretty much every one of my favorite Southern rivers and streams. We weren't about to let that spoil our day though , it just meant that we would have to stay a little closer to home and target a few different species.
We started off the day with a sack lunch in the park right next to the first stream I wanted to check out.

Nothing special , but pretty much anything tastes good when eaten at a picnic table under the sun with a good buddy.

The first stream we hit was a tailwater below a local reservoir and I was hoping to find a few carp or drum scrounging for food in some of the deeper holes, maybe even a white bass or two if I got real lucky.


Unfortunately the water levels were dismal (we could use some of that rain they got down South actually) and other than a few schools of baitfish and a couple of small sunfish we never saw a thing. It was a beautiful day to be traipsing around a creek bottom though and we both enjoyed the hike and even saw an eagle and a couple of turkeys on our walk down the creek.


These are the kind of trips that make me feel like a little kid again. I don't have to be serious about actually catching anything , I can just enjoy walking through the muddy creek bottom with my best friend at my side. We looked for wildlife , skipped rocks across shallow pools of water and just sat on the bank and stared at the clouds in the sky...enjoying the nice day when that's what we felt like doing.



After cleaning the mud off of ourselves we hopped in the truck and headed for a couple of small city lakes that I often fish for bass and carp when the weather starts to warm up about now. The first stop I didn't even take a flyrod with me , we just walked the shoreline scouting for tailing fish in the shallow bulrushes. The story was the same here though , no fish to play with. While we've had a couple of warm days strung together I'm guessing that the water temps are still just a little cold to get the fish moving. We scouted out a couple of new spots that I'll have to come back to once things get rolling and then headed back to the truck for one last stop...the bass pond.

I kind of figured that this might be my best chance at staving off the skunk for the day so I tied on a wooly bugger (catches ANYTHING) and we headed down to the water. The water was clear and still felt damn cold on my sandaled feet when I got a little too close. We worked our way around the pond in short order , fishing the deeper sections and shallow areas close to shore , all with the same results as our previous two stops.
As you've figured out by now if you're still reading , the catching part of the day was a bust. That being said , I havn't enjoyed a day of fishing any more than that in a good long while , sometimes it's enough just to get out and soak up some sun with a good friend.