Big river smallie - pics!

[Bassboss]

Me and my dad got out to the Red River today after the ate.. and boy I'm glad we did. Caught my PB smallie, it went 19 3/4 inch long and around probably around 15.5 - 16" girth.... thang was fat.



You can really see how fat it was in this pic, the tail just got cut off.





When we were walking to the spot, we found a bunch of dead smelt lookin minnows, about 3, 4. Dad started off fishing with a 3/16oz spinnerbait, and missed a few fish cause the rod he was using was so whippy. I started with a 3" mimzo tube, and caught the fist fish of the day pretty quickly, a small spunky little guy, but he almost got me wrapped up in a log jam, so that it pretty existing.

We moved up stream a little ways, and I caught a few more small one on the tube. I think my dad at the the time only had one. We came to a n-i-c-e looking ,log jam with a biggoal grass bed near it. After nothing on the tube I switched to a zoom fluke jr.. Didn't take log before I got one on that. I wasn't paying attention and I just hear something slurp something up off the top, but I looked over at my line and it was moving so I set the hook. A nice chunky 15", very strong, and a jumper. When I let this one go it just went straight down and sat by my boot for a few seconds, for the heck of it I reached down a grabbed it again, lol.

I started wadding down to the grass bed and surprisingly I didn't hook up there.. it certainly looked prime.

I wadded back over to where my dad was to see how he was doin. He still hadn't hooked up. After fishing that log jam a while some more with the fluke, and not getting anything. By my dad's suggestion, I put on a wacky rig a 4" senko. I tossed over to some logs, *bump* *bump*, my line started movin off, I gave it some slack line, it tightened it back up and set the hook. Right away it started bull dogging and doing some serious drag stripping. I got toward open water and loosed my drag up, it wasn't long before I started tightening it back up a little cause it was getting all up in the grass, Thankfully I had a 10lb leader rather then 8lb. I started working it toward dad so he could lip it, but she wouldn't have anything of it. She started taking drag and went back out a good 15 feet. I got it over to me after a while, and lipped it! First fish I've caught in a good while to were my arm started getting tired, lol. I'd also like to thank bender for them awesome sicko's... great baits, glad I got some.

Dad took his phone out and took a few pics.

We caught a few more smaller fish, and called it quites cause the skeeters were starting to come out and it was getting dark, plus you gotta do a little tropsin to get back.

Hope everyone had a good 4th, and thanks for reading.