Roger started out on Monday at daylight alone with me, as Dave did not arrive until late afternoon.
For a few moments we thought he had the river record smallie on his Fluke, but it turned out to be a 26" Channel Catfish.
The big fish of the day was this dandy 17" smallmouth.
On Tuesday Dave joined us and both were soon into fish. We had several doubles and a few times when we had three fish on at once. Fudge was not too sure about Dave's hat, however.
Roger and Fudge took a walk on one of the many islands in this section of the Snake. All are federally owned and managed by the USFWS.
Here I instructed Dave on how to make his 16" smallie look like a giant.
However, a few minutes later he didn't need to stretch his arm as a 19.25" beautiful smallmouth gave him a great fight before coming to the net. This was the best fish of the week. It came from about a foot of water near the rushes shown in the background.
An hour or so later I added a pair of dandy 18" and 18.5" fish for our total for this day. Here I show Dave how to hold a fish for a photo with the 18.5 incher. As you can see, Fudge was not impressed.
As I loaded the boat each day Fudge entertained Dave and Roger with his water retrieves. He is a terrific swimmer and won't go home until someone throws his dummy for him.
Friday Dave pulled out to head home to Denver, so Roger and I added a bunch more fish to our total. With this 16" fish that Roger caught we decided to call it quits and end a great week of fishing.
For a while we were complaining that we only caught 250 smallmouth in 5 days, but I guess 50 fish per half day isn't too bad. Both guys are great to share a week with and we sure had lots of fun.
