Monthly Archives August 2014

Backwater Casting show six

This year I am fishing out of a Mercury powered Triton 21 TRX so it seemed fitting to invite our Triton rep, Jim Lacey, to be a guest on the show. Jim graciously agreed and flew in from Ontario to spend some time with us.
We headed up the Benton which is, I believe, a Ducks Unlimited impoundment that was created with a low dam on the upper reaches of Eel River. It has created quite a wetland area which has got to be great for the migrating waterfowl.
Most of the flats are too shallow to be fishable for anything but Chain Pickerel with the Smallmouth most sticking in or near the original river channel.
The bite was a little slower than I would have liked but by the end of the day we had boated a decent amount of Smallies along with a ton of Pickerel...

We have had a six week shut down for our tournament series that covers the bulk of the Smallmouth spawning season and we are back at it now. This was our third qualifying event for the NBSFA’s Molson / Mercury Bass Tour and it come right after a visit from Hurricane Arthur. The river has droppe d a bit this week but it is still at least three feet higher than normal for July. I wouldn’t call it filthy dirty but it is definitely stained.

We planned on going up the Oromocto River for this one hoping the upper reaches would clean up first. We didn’t have any idea how much wood was in the water so we opted to take my partner’s jet boat. We can cover some ground with the inboard Mercury 250 jet and didn’t have to worry about bumping into a tree because she is heavy gauge aluminum...

My neighbor Mike hasn’t fished for several years and I asked him if he would like to go out with me as a guest on the show. Sure thing he says, can I bring a fly rod? We haven’t filmed anyone doing that yet so into the boat it went.
As luck would have it we were faced with sustained 20 to 40 k winds that day and despite his best efforts he couldn’t get a decent presentation with the fly. In the meantime I had put four fat Smallies in the boat on a Jackall 3/8 ounce Super Eruption spinnerbait. I had rigged at home on a 2500 Stradic with 8 lb Seige Green mono and a Crucial 6’6″ M rod and a #1 trailer hook. Being a nice guy I said Mike would you like me to tie one of these on for you. I took a new one out of the package and tied it on for him...