The sting of the cane!

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

Your rod struck again, Tim!
Nathan, my kid, was here and we went on a little 5 day trip with my friend Tom and his wife. MA knows Tom.
Well Tom fished the cane rod one day and here is one of his fish:

The release:

Then Nathan got lucky:-):

His release:


Nathan took the first two pics and I took the last two. Some tough exposures, sorry for the blown out parts.
We fished new water, some creeks in the Blackfoot river drainage and had a great time.
I don't know what it is about it but this rod just attracts large fish, awesome rod:-).
Oh yeah, another one of Nate:

[{OF}Malicious Assault]

Nice pics ER I use to fish the Blackfoot when I was a teenager Great fishing

[ClydeFrog]

Wow !! ! What a beautiful fish and such beautiful water too!

I just returned from a week+ trip to the Keweenaw peninsula in Upper Michigan. I just uploaded all the photos but haven't captioned them or assembled the panoramas but if anyone is interested you can see them here: Keweenaw - a photoset on Flickr

The Keweenaw is a fairly narrow peninsula so you don't get many big streams and hence not many big fish. Lots of smaller (14" is big) broookies which is how I grew up so I love it. I went a bit south and hit the Sturgeon River which has some big browns. Caught this guy in a fairly shallow riffle on the second cast:



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Just above that spot another rapids tumbled into a very deep hole - a perfect spot for a big fat brown to spend a lazy day chowing. I carefully approached and sent a nice cast through and immediately hooked a monster. It was so big it took him a second to realize he was hooked because I had a light rod. He stayed in the hold and I fought him carefully and even if I didn't land him I at least wanted a good look. After several minutes I coaxed him out of the hole and this is what I saw:

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Yup, it's about a 20" smallmouth bass. AAARRRGHH!!! For those of you who don't fish for trout this is like thinking you hooked a perfectly cooked prime rib only to reel in a bag of fast food cheeseburgers. Granted it might have been perfectly happy catching this fish somewhere else but not when I'm trout fishing. It's a step above catching a carp or a lamprey eel but maybe a step below an old boot or a used comdom. Ah well, it was a fantastic trip all the same.

(Sorry to poop on your trout thread ER!)

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

Cool pics Tim:-), you're not pooping on my thread, lol.
I LOVE smallmouths and that is a great fish. Not an ounce of give-up in them.
I love fishing season!

[{OF}Blong]

mmm keewenaw. lived there for 3 years.