07-11-2007, 12:04 AM
went out this weekend with a good friend who was passing through town. we went below cheatham dam in the boat..my friend paid for gas! nice!
didn't catch much but after being anchored up at a hole that is good sometimes, I noticed something floating toward us in the river.
At first I thought it was just a large white bird/duck drifting in the gentle current. As it got closer, I could tell it was not a bird but some trash or something else.
after several more minutes I realized it was a good sized dead fish.
as it approached, I decided we would go try another hole (no bites) and I wanted to check out the fish, as it was fairly big.
we trolled over to it and found it to be a 20-25 pound rockfish, floating upside down.
I tried to roll it with my paddle to look for obvious damage and the darned fish thrashed its tail and scared the CRAP outta me..lol it wasn't dead.
I grabbed the fish by the jaw tied a stringer to it and trolled around off and on for about 30 minutes and it came back to life. I had a Hard time getting it untied and when I did, it took off with a wicked smack of its tail.
we waited around for a while to see if it might re-surface, but it never did.
Hopefully i'll see that fish again on the business end of my fishing pole in a couple years.
The fishing sucked, but this experience made it a memorable trip!
cyas
robert
didn't catch much but after being anchored up at a hole that is good sometimes, I noticed something floating toward us in the river.
At first I thought it was just a large white bird/duck drifting in the gentle current. As it got closer, I could tell it was not a bird but some trash or something else.
after several more minutes I realized it was a good sized dead fish.
as it approached, I decided we would go try another hole (no bites) and I wanted to check out the fish, as it was fairly big.
we trolled over to it and found it to be a 20-25 pound rockfish, floating upside down.
I tried to roll it with my paddle to look for obvious damage and the darned fish thrashed its tail and scared the CRAP outta me..lol it wasn't dead.
I grabbed the fish by the jaw tied a stringer to it and trolled around off and on for about 30 minutes and it came back to life. I had a Hard time getting it untied and when I did, it took off with a wicked smack of its tail.
we waited around for a while to see if it might re-surface, but it never did.
Hopefully i'll see that fish again on the business end of my fishing pole in a couple years.
The fishing sucked, but this experience made it a memorable trip!
cyas
robert