6am came around a lot earlier than I wanted it to on Sunday morning. The Lynyrd Skynyrd concert from the night before (interesting crowd to say the least) left me a little groggy, but it’s always a little easier to find a way to wake up if it involves getting some time in on the water.
After a couple hours of drive time and a pit stop or two to fish some promising looking creeks along our route(mostly unsuccessful… except a small drum and a couple long shots at cruising carp), we made it to our destination smallie creek, and it was a beauty. I had never fished it before, but Brent had so he knew where to find some solid public acess.
I was pumped just to see such cool water, fish or no fish, it was going to be a good day.

Gonna bring a short rod next time...

Better lookin' than some of our "trout" streams
The water was stained from some precip earlier in the week, but not stained enough to keep us from spotting some fish. No monster class smallies were brought to hand, but they were some beauties nonetheless.

Looks legitimately unhappy to be hooked

Not quite the Cali clarity, but better than my typical brownwater stomping grounds

Standard
We got into a couple of pools that produced a juvenile channel catfish on every cast. Kept waiting to find mama or daddy cat, but no luck there. I thought the sunfish were particularly photogenic though…

Being shy... but gave us a nice shot of his split tail?

Not bad for a longear

So colorful
Hoping to get back out there with Brent and some float tubes to check out some of the deeper/slower sections. Really want to get into some big ol’ smallies. Great day on the water though… always fun to hike a creek and explore unfamiliar water.