A Little Middle Georgia River Action

Our resident young trout bum Landon Williams has headed to middle Georgia for summer break but he hasn't taken a break from fishing.  Here's his story of an epic battle with Ole Bucketmouth.

I fished a section of an Ocmulgee River tributary near home on Monday night. I hit the river from about 5:30-8 PM and was into fish the whole time. Fish were chasing bream on the shoreline and eating damselflies and dobsonflies as soon as they hit the water all evening. I stuck with a white Stealth Bomber, size 4, all evening and was into fish the entire time. I caught several largemouth bass up to 2 1/2 lbs on it and several hand sized bluegills and redbreast thrown in for good measure. 

I finally got up to the best looking stretch of water, a nice run with current that undercuts a huge bedrock ledge and has a big back eddy with a lot of foam over the top of it. I continued with the Stealth Bomber but didn't catch anything. 

Next I tried a couple of large streamers with nary a bump with various retrieval speeds. I finally settled on my favorite river bass fly, a Grey Dahlberg Diver.

On the first cast, I cast straight into the back eddy with the foam . I popped the Dahlberg as hard as I could twice and then just let it sit for a few seconds. The pause was met with the most violent topwater take I've ever personally seen and sent the foam flying everywhere. I could tell it was a big bass but didn't know just how big until after the first jump a couple minutes into the fight. It took all my nerve and a little bit of luck to counter the fish rubbing against sharp rocks and jumping about 4 times throughout the fight. I finally got the best of the fish and he came to hand like a tired puppy dog.

This is by far the best largemouth I've ever taken on a fly rod and the fact that it was from a section of river that is heavily fished made it that much more special. Wonder what I caught him with? It was on a 6wt with about 6 lb line for tippet! I decided to let the fish so I don't know for sure how much it weighed but I would venture to say in the neighborhood of 9 lbs or so. 

Hope you guys enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed sharing it!

Landon