When I slid the boat in the river yesterday, it was overcast, drizzling and forty-eight degrees. This is going to be a tough day, I thought to myself. Two and a half hours into the trip and we had one little bump, probably an over ambitious eight inch smallmouth. Since the last time I was on the river, just three days earlier, so much had changed. Sure, it had been unseasonably warm, but the cool nights and shorter days had taken their toll. Nearly all the weed beds and grass had died and uprooted. Thank God it was all gone and not floating on the surface in dense mats that would make a gear guy with a weedless rubber frog cringe. It was tough to see the bottom anywhere, even in two feet of water. The expanses of multi-colored stones and khaki hued sand were now cloaked with dead plant matter creating a nearly black canvas on the river bottom. We went into lunch with a little momentum, two good sized smallmouth off the rock on river right just above our lunch island. While we were enjoying a sandwich and conversation, the sun finally broke the clouds. It was like an artist took a loaded brush and flung it against a wall. The autumn colors, before shrouded and bleak, were now brilliant. The afternoon yielded several great fish and the occasional shotgun blast from local duck hunters. There was no sight fishing and there sure as hell were no popper fish, but each fish was earned and respectful. That's something in my book.
