The plan was to hit Brushy Branch, net at least 150 shad, and hit the Oosty above Rome to look for Stripers. Julie and I were up at 3AM and hit the road at 4AM, arrived at Brushy and beat the crowd. Only problem was locating shad! After throwing the net for 90 minutes, I only managed 70 shad - not enough for my liking for an Oostanaula trip. So the laziness in me took over and decided to just fish the Coosa for some catfish.
Headed out to the Coosa and quickly saw shad dimpling everywhere in the stained water - so that's where all the little bastages are! Headed up river to one of our favorite spots, dropped anchors and got lines out. It didn't take long to start getting bites. Our two biggest kitties hit at the same time causing a Chinese Fire drill. Julie's bait was clobbered and wrapped around the other 3 lines we had out creating a huge mess of twisted lines. I grabbed one of the twisted lines and realized it was wrapped up to Julie's fish so I hung on just in case her line broke. About 10 yards from the boat I realized my line was moving a different direction than Julie's. How can that be?
At that point we realized we had a double going on. Jeesh, fish much? Julie's fish was a nice 21 pound Blue, and mine was a 17 pound flatty. We had several other kitties from sailcat size to about 8 pounds. After 12:30, the bite ended and we left around 3:00. As expected, no Stripers, but my guess is they are way up river above Rome making baby Stripers.
Over the years we've seen a lot of critters swimming in the river but Saturday was a first for us - seeing hogs crossing the river. We saw two of them crossing in the same spot about 20 minutes apart. I started craving a BLT sandwich after seeing that. The first one was massive - it looked like a bear swimming across the river.
Hopefully next week I'll net more shad and we'll see if the Stripers are still above Rome. It was a beautiful day on the river. The river was stained but very fishable.
Headed out to the Coosa and quickly saw shad dimpling everywhere in the stained water - so that's where all the little bastages are! Headed up river to one of our favorite spots, dropped anchors and got lines out. It didn't take long to start getting bites. Our two biggest kitties hit at the same time causing a Chinese Fire drill. Julie's bait was clobbered and wrapped around the other 3 lines we had out creating a huge mess of twisted lines. I grabbed one of the twisted lines and realized it was wrapped up to Julie's fish so I hung on just in case her line broke. About 10 yards from the boat I realized my line was moving a different direction than Julie's. How can that be?
At that point we realized we had a double going on. Jeesh, fish much? Julie's fish was a nice 21 pound Blue, and mine was a 17 pound flatty. We had several other kitties from sailcat size to about 8 pounds. After 12:30, the bite ended and we left around 3:00. As expected, no Stripers, but my guess is they are way up river above Rome making baby Stripers.
Over the years we've seen a lot of critters swimming in the river but Saturday was a first for us - seeing hogs crossing the river. We saw two of them crossing in the same spot about 20 minutes apart. I started craving a BLT sandwich after seeing that. The first one was massive - it looked like a bear swimming across the river.
Hopefully next week I'll net more shad and we'll see if the Stripers are still above Rome. It was a beautiful day on the river. The river was stained but very fishable.
