RIVERS CAN BE A SMORGASBORD OF FISHING

(Rivers can be a Smorgasbord of Fishing by Bob Phillips first appeared in Lake Champlain Weekly in June 2010)
   Often times, when you are involved in leisure activities such as fishing, you receive the greatest pleasures when you least expect them. That was such the case last week during the fishing we were able to get in. We headed to the Saranac River to do some fishing for whatever could be found. We found a number of different species were interested that day.
   The beautiful thing about rivers is that their environments change every few feet. Standing in one place on a riverbank, you may be able to fish sunken logs laying on a sandy bottom with one cast and then with the next be fishing a jumble of rocks. Weeds and lily pads might be prolific in one area and just down stream might be a stretch of rapids. You never know what you might find or where you might find fish.
   We started out under a bridge and to be truthful it didn’t look to good for a while. We fished about forty-five minutes without a single bite. I started drifting my line along bottom in a fairly deep hole, bumping it along with a heavy sinker of about a half ounce weight. After a few passes along the sand bar, that stuck out into the pool, I finally got a hit. Just a couple tugs on the line and I figured it was probably a perch or rock bass. I set the hook and immediately felt some significant weight.
   It took a few minutes to land the fish, but I soon had a nice walleye in hand. It was just under 17 inches in length. Was I excited! This was the first walleye I had caught in quite a few years and it was right in the middle of the day. I haven’t been able to get out fishing walleye the last few years because we are usually out turkey hunting during the best part of the season. A night crawler on weighted line, bouncing along bottom apparently looked quite tempting to this one.
   We headed further downriver and soon found another good sized hole to fish. Here we started catching panfish immediately. They were rock bass but put up quite a nice battle on light line. There were a few that were approaching three quarters of a pound in weight. Here I was also in for my second big surprise of the day when I hooked into a big sucker. This one ran about twenty-four inches in length and as usual was so ugly that only a mother could love it.
   My fishing partner also got a couple of nice fish. He hooked into a small mouth bass and after releasing that, he caught another. He caught quite a few rock bass as well at that hole.
   Traveling further down stream it was Gary’s turn to catch a walleye. This one was about fourteen inches in length just under the legal size. Here we caught a few more rock bass and some more small mouth as well.
   We headed back upriver toward where we started out, in hopes that there might be some more walleye in the one big hole we found. As it turned out, the walleye I caught must have been a fluke since they are usually schooling fish and yet there didn’t seem to be any others around.
   I did hook into one more surprise fish before heading home. I had some tentative strikes at my line and thought I was playing with another walleye. When I set the hook, I immediately felt some weight to the fish and the fight was strong, so I knew it wasn’t a small panfish. As I got it into shore, I had a pretty rainbow trout about fifteen inches in length. I will never know how big for certain because it spit the hook out right at my feet.
   This kind of fishing can get expensive. I must have left about a dozen rigs of sinker, snap swivel and snelled hooks on the bottom of the river. Oh, well. Another trip to the tackle shop to replenish!
   I hope you find such a smorgasbord when next you go afield and astream.