River Raisin Smallie Fishing!

For the past week or so, I've been hitting the smallmouth in downtown Monroe pretty hard as the carp fishing has been quite discouraging. It's been excellent as I kind of stumbled upon it on accident. I asked a few people around town if anyone fished in downtown Monroe, Michigan and they all said yes but no one has recently taken anything significantly big out of there. Well, I headed down to the extremely shallow river last Tuesday eveningg and I then discovered how good of a fishing spot it was. Smallies everywhere.

Tuesday evening was a trial run. I caught quite a few smallies by just high stick nymphing it with my 8ft 4wt. They weren't big but they definitely were fun. Wednesday, I really took a stab at it and caught quite a few 12", 13" and 14" smallies, which is quite big for that part of the river, on my Redington CT 9' 4wt. However, the highlight of my trip was last night, Sunday, which I caught a 14" smallie but also a 21" northern pike! Best part was it was all on my 4wt!

Below is the video of me catching the nice 14" smallie from yesterday. Put up a decent fight but didn't have my hemostats outside of my pack unfortunately. He was released unharmed, which is good. : )

The last fish of the day was a beautiful 21" northern pike. I actually scared it and then saw it moving down stream and kind of lost hope. Then I saw it again facing upstream downstream. : ) I quickly took off my leech fly and tied on a heavy weighted Clouser Minnow in chartreuse and white. I jigged it in front of the pike and it lunged at it then casually bit it half way. I let it sit, and I lifted the rod and set the hook. The pike did the rest! : )

The video was quite difficult to shoot as my net was not cooperating with me which was extremely frustrating.....I did get it in and measure it though! Unfortunately, you cannot see me measuring it. Nevertheless, it was released unharmed and slowly swam away in defeat. Sad that its jaw was pretty beat up. Glad I could give it another chance to grow into an even bigger fish!

Now, all that is left is me catching a carp soon. I've been discouraged as my carp trips have failed. Miserably. In fact, I drove 45 minutes to Elmore, Ohio only to find that the river was blown out! Chocolate milk and very high and fast flowing river! : ( Oh well. It was good to go on an adventure! Until next time folks! Tight lines!