First Bass Float of the Year

Jeff (Fishwhisperer)  and myself have been planning a river fishing  trip for 2 years on a river we fish often, but  on a very hard to get in section and  a very difficult portage at the end. Yesterday 3.17.12 was the day and we got a very early start and  arrived at waters edge  at daylight  My game plan today was to  throw a white Booyah spinnerbait and only change if that wasn't working.  I ended up throwing the spinnerbait 95 percent of the time and the rogue 5 percent ...maybe......
The water was slightly stained and 63 degrees warm with an air temp of 56 to start out with. Immediately they were pouncing on my white spinnerbait. This was my biggest for the day  and 4th or 5th caught.

You can tell it is still pretty dark but the fish were hammering the spinnerbait at first light. This bite  lasted about 1 - 1.5hrs of the float and then it died.  I switched to a Roque for awhile and caught a small bass on it and a decent crappie.

another spinnerbait bass

Here is Jeff's best bass of the day. He was wearing them out on topwater and sometimes a spinnerbait.

Here are few more

 Jeff had gotten about 100 yards ahead of me and I heard him yell something about herons. I was thinking "hasn't he seen a heron before"??? Then when I get up to where he was there are all these Herons in a tree squawking at me. This is the first heron rookery I have seen directly on a North Carolina Piedmont flow. Usually around here they have their nest off the major water course in a swamp beside the river . The only thing i can fiqure is this section rarely gets floated so they felt comfortable nesting there. You can't tell it from the picture but these nest were in the process of being built as some were very small.

A couple other shots.

We saw lots of geese and wood ducks, 1otter, 1 eagle , 1 pileated woodpecker, and lots of herons. A pretty good day to start the year off bass fishing. A lot of bass caught with good company. The air temp after a chilly 56 deg start quickly went to 80 degrees. 

A very good day on the water that ended at aprox 3 pm and was probably the hardest I have worked getting a boat to the water and also out of the water and back in my vehicle. 

Mack