Decisions, Decisions, Decisions

Josh Giran Well, it’s that time of year, do I take the .22 and go for squirrels or the flippin stick and go for spots. Do I take the bow and go for whitetails or the cranking rod and go for smallies. The shotgun and go for turkey or, you get the idea. Up here, in the northern part of the country, the trees are beginning to shed their colorful leaves. Everything in the woods seems to be alive and constantly feeding up for the winter. So are the fish. There are not enough days in the week for me to get in everything I want to do outdoors. I decided on hitting the water. It wasn’t a very nice day, although there was plenty of sunshine. The high reached the upper 40’s the day I went out and the wind blew ALL day. I decide to go fish one of the pools on the Monongahela river (the mon). It started off really good; my buddy caught a nice chunky smallmouth on the 3rd cast. It hit a Strike King Crankbait, Series 3 in Sexy Shad. We caught about 15 fish a piece over the next 4 hours. We each had a few that were over 3lbs and for the river, that’s a lunker. I was switching between a War Eagle Finesse spinnerbait and a homemade 3/8oz green pumpkin jig with a baby Paca crawl for a trailer. Now my buddy is still throwing the crankbait and occasionally flipping a green pumpkin tube. All of the fish he caught were smallmouth and tried as I might I couldn’t catch one. All of mine were spots. It got to the point were I would let him flip to the dock first. Yet he still would catch the smallmouths and I would only catch spots. Do these fish have that much of a preferred taste that they would only eat a tube instead of a jig or a spinnerbait over a crankbait. I have no idea and couldn’t figure it out. But hey, at least we caught lots of fish and I got to fish with a buddy of mine who hadn’t been out fishing since early July.

Decisions, decisions, decisions! While some of us are getting ready for end of the year championships, I’m trying to decide what circuit I am going to fish next year. I’m trying to weigh the pro’s and con’s of each. Right now, I’m leaning towards FLW’s, American Fishing League Northern series. The locations of these venues favor my fishing strengths. I wish I had the financial means and work flexibility to fish the Opens, FLW, and the Weekend Series. But I have to resort to picking one or the other. I need to make a decision soon. I once read a fishing article about decision making on the water, I think it was by KVD. The short of what I remember is that as soon as you start to think I should move to another spot, you should have already been there. Life is full of decisions; I just hope that I make the right ones. Until next time, I hope that you make the right decisions, in life and on the water.