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I had made plans to take the recently shared Orvis marked Phillipson 8ft 8wt out to do a little Largemouth Bass buggin this afternoon but mother nature had other plans. The body of water I was going to hit up is pretty large and the launch is on the downwind end of the SW wind fetch (our normal summer wind) and with a front approaching gusts were just too strong to mess around with in a canoe.

So plan b was initiated and I wound up on a closer and more protected waterway and even that was interesting with the strong gusts. We haven't had much in the way of rain lately and this little river I wound up on is really showing it. But it is very fertile and there was plenty of bait around so it was worth the effort even if I didn't pickup any bass.

Hyrdrilla has taken over a good portion of the slow water now providing lots of cover but leaving little weed free water to fish. There are two chutes that are tunnels above and below the stretch I fished and they usually hold some nice bass. I have yet to catch anything from these very tricky stretchs and I was hoping to change that today. These fish are in fairly shallow clear water and are attracted by the shade. But after spending a half hour testing various drifts into the upper run I gave up and moved down river. Wasn't meant to be today...

In the end I wound up using a green gartside gurgler and a similar foam frog and caught a number of nice pickerel. I sacraficed two flies before I got smart and upped the leader size. Then I threw on a big deer hair bug which was pretty large for the 7ft Orvis marked Phillipson 6wt I was using.

It was quite exilerating fishing topwater for these pickerel! The one pickerel that nailed the bass bug (see photo) exploded on it with no warning from underneath . The first couple of other pickerel I at least had some warning as I saw the tell tale wake dart out from the weeds but this guy totally caught me off guard. When I threw on the bass bug I didin't know what to expect just thought since it had a weed guard I could toss it into the mats and maybe pickup a bass. Guess not but not complaining.

Very Fun outing even if it wasn't the bass bugging that I originally planned for the day...