I love this time of year, I hate this time of year. Here in the mid-Atlantic, we have some really great weather in September and October, still warm enough to be comfortable in a tee-shirt most of the time. The challenge is we also tend to get rain and wind…often at the same time. So, you look for the breaks maybe accept a windy day that will blow 15 to 20 mph in search of what you know may be a monster smallmouth bulking up for the winter. This was the case when I was out recently on my kayak fishing as many rock piles I could find. Throwing a square-billed crank bait over those rocks was working well. The fast action, medium power of the SR001 gave me the sensitivity and backbone I wanted. On this day, it produced several nice smallies with a couple in the 3lb+ range. I love that. But what surprised me more on this trip was one morning, it was raining and I got tired of waiting for it to let up. I threw on some rain gear and headed out to throw a few cast off the dock. Not two cast in, I get a hit, set the hook and realized this was something much bigger than what I normally get off the dock. As I’m fighting the fish I realize two things; one, no net and two, no phone. With a successful fight, I land a beautiful largemouth off the side of the dock. As I admire this fish, I’m thinking this is likely a PB and oh, yeah, no phone. Dumb. So I give a yell up to the house, it’s mid-morning, I know people are up! But no response. So, I have only one option, make the mad dash up to the house to get a quick pic and then back to the water. As you can see, I got the picture and release this beautiful fish without incident. The consensus at the time was 7lb+, I don’t know, but still a great fish.
As we move into the winter months, look for a couple of new things from Sycamore Rod Co. We will be expanding our line to offer ice fishing rods over the next couple of weeks and we will have some merch. How can we be a rod company and not have tee-shirts!
Dan Staud
Sycamore Rod Company