Great Summer Fishing

The little man and I have had one hell of a summer fishing this year let me tell you! With him being older and able to handle the weather and all that better than he could before, that means that we've been able to get out there a lot more and enjoy the different fishing spots around that we can find!

One of the things that we've been really trying to do is catch different kinds of fish. We love catching the common stuff like Bass, be it largemouth or smallmouth but I've been trying to figure out how to expand our repertoire for things that we catch and get other things like trout and some others. We went to this fun river that wasn't too far away from us and we were able to score something we've never caught before! I don't know exactly what this thing is but it is cool!

It has the mouth of a trout that's for sure but the body of it doesn't look like a trout. It doesn't have the right colors. A friend of ours said that this was a Fallfish (Chub species apparently? Lol) or a Dace.

The Fallfish is the more likely option here because of the habitat that it is said to live in. The Dace is more of a European fish although the picture of it looks incredibly similar to the Fallfish! Not being a fish expert in the different species, I am leaning towards it being a Fallfish and will look to try and catch some more that's for sure!

We've caught some really good bass around in our journeys as well! We've gotten a lot more bass this year than we did last and I've been having a blast catching them with the little man! We've gotten a few of the larger ones that have been a hell of a lot of fun to fight and reel in. We've gotten a few of the smaller ones that are a pound or more but we've gotten some heffers like this one that are over two, two and a half pounds!

One of the things that I'm attributing the success to is my switching up of the tackle that I've been using. The lure that I'm using here has been a killer for me and my fishing success! It's a crank bait and this one is a jointed one so it looks like an injured fish that's going nuts. When you're reeling it in at a decent pace, the bass go nuts and strike it pretty damn hard!

Of course we've also done some alternate techniques lately as well and that's led us to catching different things like a few catfish! We only caught one or two last year but so far this year we've caught about 5 or 6 I think at this point! Pretty fun, except trying to get the hook out lol. I've perfected it a little bit though, these smaller ones it's easy to grab them by the lip with a pair of pliers and hold them gently while I get the hook out. Has worked well so far!

The other fun part of it all is that the little man has gotten to catch a good number of the bass here. He's become quite the little angler himself! He's done a great job at gaining some confidence in his skills and has reeled in a few more bass than he's lost which has been great! I'm really happy to see that he's found something that he likes so much that gets us outside where we belong as people, and spending lots of quality time together. I certainly hope that he remembers these times fishing when he gets older and looks back on them as fondly as I do!