Sassafrass River Fishing, Part 1

In addition to the kayaking posted earlier, the main part of our sunday on the Sassafrass was for the first fishing expedition of the year. Well, that is if you can call sitting in a chair on the front lawn with a beer in hand as an expedition... We were fishing straight off the bulkhead in a couple feet of water because it was a nice shady spot on a sunny day. Amp caught the official first fish of the season, a small white perch.


I like to fish a variety of artificial lures when I have a few moments to myself, but when the family is fishing as a group, we keep it simple. For us this means bottom fishing with night crawlers. Using this you can catch just about anything in the river with the exception of bass. Even at that, you can catch little bass this way if you are lucky.

The kids love to be on the dock, so here is mom and the kids heading for new fishing grounds.


Fulfilling another important function, here are Dave and Lori keeping the lawn from floating away, and doing a very nice job of it.


Julia's first fish of the season, another small white perch.

After a number of little fish, mom comes up with the first real fish of the year, a medium sized channel catfish. These aren't the biggest fish in the world, but on a 4'6" or 5' ultralight rod and 4 pound test line, they give a good fight and can pop your line if you aren't careful. Most of our family fishing here is on this kind of tackle. Most of our little setups are Ugly Stick rods and small Shakespeare reels. I will use a medium sized rig when I am hoping for bigger catfish, or fishing with lures. Rig of choice these days for me is a 6'6" medium-fast action St Croix spinning rod with a Shimano 3000 FD reel using 8 lb test monofilament line. Good multi purpose stuff.

to be continued.