No, not Dan Akroyd, putting a bass in a blender.
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/ ... 8631?snl=1The automatic bass are the smallmouth of the John Day River. The John Day runs through Eastern Oregon's high desert, and at 284 miles is the third largest undammed river in America. Smallmouth took it over in the 1970's and thrive there. They tend to be small, but for sheer numbers the fishing is remarkable. You hear stories of 100 fish days, fish on ten straight casts etc. Our club was planning a trip to a campground on the lower portion, but it was cancelled because of record heat, and no shade anywhere. I was looking forward to going, so I made my own plans.
Basically the hotter the weather and the lower the water the better the fishing. I had gone of a couple of spring rafting/kayak trips during high water, and caught a few fish on a spinning rod, but they were paddling trips. This year river flow peaked at 20,000 cfs in March. Prime boating is May-June, as it drops to 4,000-2,000 cfs. Below 800 cfs the boating is tough, grinding drift boats and grounding rafts. I went at 120 cfs.
I didn't want to try a long wilderness canyon at those flows, so I thought I'd check the fishing on a section with a road next to the river. Maybe the fishing would be good in spite of the easy access. First cast, a feisty fish grabbed the fly and ripped off some line. He puked up some minnows and two more bass grabbed those. I got four fish on the first five casts. OK, the section by the road works just fine.
I fished that afternoon and booked an eight mile shuttle, and the next morning launched my frameless pontoon:
I had been told the fish might run just 5-7", but they would make up for size with good topwater action. I found plenty of 10" fish, fat and powerful enough to move the boat, and some line ripping 12-14" fish. The best fish of the day I named Bruce Banner, the guy who turned into the Incredible Hulk when stressed. I caught this little guy:
Suddenly the rod bent double and some basszilla headed to the bottom of the pool. I figured either he had turned into the Hulk, or was eaten. I managed to get it stable in a deep hole and tried to wear it out, when suddenly it turned back to Bruce Banner. This little fish had a bad day, but swam away.
The best fly was a thing called an Tequeely Streamer. You can get them from Orvis for $2.75 "hand tied in Kenya" but I got some on ebay direct from Kenya way cheaper. It is unweighted, and I found I could cast to the grass, pull it in and get the fish waiting for a hopper, but in open water it took more and bigger fish than a surface fly, and it ran shallow enough to see the takes.
Like many of the glass fanatics I brought a pile of gear. The first day I used my Orvis Superfine glass 5wt, but after 30 fish the Sharkwave textured line burned my stripping fingers out. I caught most of them on a Fewnwick FF 807, a super rod for big or small fish, but after two days and over 100 fish my wrist and arm were wasted and I finished with a light and easy to cast 4wt pack rod I brought. Here's some fish and scenes:
Oh yeah--Never saw another person!