Mancation 2009

This past Memorial Day weekend I went fishing and camping with my friend from Winston Salem, Evan Hawkins. We usually do one backpacking or fishing trip each year and this year we took a bigger trip since things will slow down a bit once Zachary's born. We borrowed his dad's canoe and went up to the New River near Blacksburg, VA. This river is famous for smallmouth bass and is considered the best river in the southeast for that fish.

Each day we floated down the river for several miles, anchoring the boat at good spots. The fishing was very good and the scenery was beautiful. On Saturday we probably caught around 80 fish between the two of us. Most of it was the smaller rock bass (aka "redeye") and brim, but we did catch some good smallmouth bass here and there. I caught the biggest fish of the weekend, a 14 inch smallmouth on a "bloody bugger" fly that I tied (white woolly bugger with red hackle). I also caught a very feisty 13 inch smallmouth that I fought for about 3 or 4 minutes. Evan also got several smallies in the 10-13 inch range. On our last day we both kept some fish to bring home. I managed to catch 6 good sized redeyes but had no luck with smallmouth that day.

This picture was my personal favorite. When removing the hook from this redeye I noticed he recently chowed down on a crawfish.