My Fishing Vacation Thread

[south point]

Its already been a long winter for me. early last fall the shop foreman in my auto body shop retired so now I am top dog, and my to-do list at work went through the roof. the long hours have me worn down, so I am taking a vacation and leaving all my responsibilities behind this week.
I started my vacation by taking a trip to Tennessee to catch some catfish bait, skipjacks. went to the Cumberland City power plant and fished the warm water discharge and had a blast. it was slow by local standards, and only caught about 90 skips.... back home on sunday night and fished the mighty Missouri on Monday. took my buddy Jim and did pretty good, ended up catching 7 blues and 2 channels from 5-12lbs, then ran into a fiend who gave us another channel and blue for a total of 11 nice cats to clean.
at the very end of the day yesterday, finally had a good one on. was fishing in hard straight line current on the edge of a deeper hole and I saw my rod tip twitch a few times, then it pulled down about 4 inches and stayed there. I jumped up and put my hand on the reel and as I did my pole slammed down in the rod holder and started peeling drag for a brief second. grabbed the pole and the fish gave me a couple of head shakes that ripped drag and then he was gone! it's always the one the got away, but that's why I love fishing our big rivers! never know what is gonna stretch your line....
plenty of fish in the freezer now so the rest of the week is catch and release.... headed back to the river now so plenty more updates to follow!

[LSL Angler]

Looks like you picked a good week Greg. Nice looking fish. I got the work blues also but gotta keep plugging away. Good luck fishing today.

[long poler]

Nice fish.
Perfect time for vacation, enjoy

[perchplucker]

Nice. Those cold water cats will taste good. Hope to get out soon if ice and life will lets us. And the weather. Noticed no floating ice on Mo river. Also the sections of the Gasconade and Osage we saw sunday were ice free for the most part. Sending you a pm about skipjacks.

[Route U]

Sounds like you were due some time off.........and took advantage of it, which is key!

Nice kitty-kats!

U

[ripnlips]

Kinda wondered what was with the lack of posting. Hope you had a great week off and know that you deserve another. Good luck Greg hope to see you in the spring.

[BarryG]

254 days and I start a long vacation! In 295 days I retire!!!!!

[south point]

Today I invited my buddy, Aaron out on the river, and another friend and his dad also brought their boat out. was chilly with a brisk west wind. the bite was much slower today but we still caught 1 blue and one channel and the other boat scaught some as well.
right now, the river is very clean and clear (for the Missouri) and my hummingbird was showing some great images today, so we spent some time looking around with my graph hoping to find some schools of shad (fail) or maybe some bigger cats (fail) or even some promising spots to fish (fail)but I did get a really good shot of my throw net sinking (on the opposite side of the boat that the school of bait was)
still was a great day on the river watching big flocks of geese and ducks, a few bald eagles and enjoying some friends company!

[catman]

Nice pics Greg, looks like a successful vacation.

[jbornhop]

nice, it sounds like your having a lot of fun.