Shall I go or shall I stay? That is what faced me on Friday. A planned trip was cancelled and it had not started raining as forecasted. I decided on a local trip on the Mississippi which requires some paddling. This fine fellow was caught under an inflatable along the way. I have caught a SMB this size before at exactly this same spot so I am assuming it is the same one. Bass will stake out a territory such as a dock and keep everyone else away, its owner's too, if it could. Of course it started to rain (after having waited all morning), but when I got to the faster moving water, all was forgiven. I was catching SMB regularly. I was seeing some caddis and mayflies coming off and put on a white phentex humpy. A very large SMB jumped into the air and was gone almost as soon. I figured well over 20". Later on, I had a Red Rabbit on (red body, white rabbit strip along the top). This was a trout fly originally but I was seldom using it, so it ended up in the Bass Box (where most of my failed trout flies end up, bass being less discerning than trout). I thought a log had caught the fly and was heading downstream but no, a few very heavy head shakes and the line whizzing out of my reel told me otherwise. In 20 years of fishing the Mississippi, this is the first time for a "whizzer", at least as far as I can remember. Snapped off!! How many times do I have to learn this??!! I had noticed my 3X tippet was a bit crinkled and I did not change it. The tippet spool is also getting a bit aged. Big fish fishermen write that you should be throwing out tippet and leader material after one or two years. Being the trout bums that most of us are, we like to spend our money on gas rather than throwing out what seems to be good line. But if you do, you may just pay the price. At least I have the knowledge that 'Grand Dad' is out there, ready to be caught again.
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