"Trout Life"

I've spent a few weekends this fall in the West Jefferson area getting ready for deer hunting and doing some trout fishing. I've fished the north and south forks of the New and Big Helton creek (which is delayed harvest catch and release single hook artificial only waters). 

Missed the biggest Brown Trout of my life on the North fork throwing a in-line spinner for a few cast randomly (it was a massive log of a fish!).  But I have caught a lot of nice fish on both the fly and spinning rods techniques recently. 

Trout on ice and fly

 Hatchery Supported Dinner (not delayed harvest waters). Lucky to find a few fish still left in those waters this time of year... 

FLORIDA Fishing! Thanksgiving week

We decided that it had been "long enough" since we'd seen Lynae's grandparents in FL (and too long since we'd caught some Butterfly Peacock Bass in South Florida waters, West Little Havana) So... we left NC and drove 14 hours  to their house in Pembroke Pines, near Rainbow lakes.  As we were driving down, a cold front (the years second arctic blast to hit the southeast for 2014) hits south Florida. Wonderful. So we stocked up on super slow presentations: drop shot, jigs, suspending cranks, and a worm box was ready. We did have a pretty good topwater session for 45 mins one night catching 7-8 smaller bass. For the most part drop-shot slow presentation worms/shaky and bright spinnerbaits caught most fish.

We had access to a great canoe to fish from the whole time and took it on our new SUV's roof rack for the first time (worked out great). The lake we stayed on produced better peacocks this year and the place we were hoping was on fire with big fish was almost empty of all types of fish compared to last year. We did pull out the biggest peacock from a public fishing lake in West Little Havana, but we really had to work for the very few fish we managed in over a half day of paddling in strong winds.

And then… there was the one that got away. A close to 10lb Large Mouth Bass. I hooked it on the drop-shot in deep water in the middle of the lake. Watched it jump twice, pulled it in on it's side toward the canoe. It came within a foot of the net my wife was holding, then thrashed once more and we lost it.

Cool looking peacock that hit a Rapala suspending husky jerk!

Lynae gets the prize for largest Peacock Two years running with this mean fish that she pulled out off a grass ledge near a bridge. It came out of nowhere and slammed her spinnerbait right in front of us in clear water…. (Amazing cast and fight girl!!)

This day we caught over 30 bass around 2 lbs using the drop-shot.

The life...

Our fishing spot was right near a landing path for the airport, kinda wild..