Choteau Bend 4-17-10

Had the pleasure of taking JD & Ruth Smith of Sapulpa on their first trip to Choteau Bend on their quest to snag their first ever Spoonbill and then spend the day fishing for the Sand bass that are making the Spring spawning run up the Grand River.

JD was the first to “score” his first ever Spoonie which weighed in at 41 lbs. The fish made a strong initial run and we thought it’d be a big-un but when we got it to the boat, it was snagged in the tail which explained the great fight the fish gave.

Ruth was next up with her first ever Spoonie and it about wore her out. We finally boated the fish after it made several good runs and maneuvered the boat downstream to help in the battle. When we pulled her Spoonie into the boat, there was no doubt that it was quite a bit larger than JD’s which made for some interesting conversation between them for a while. Ruth’s first Spoonie tipped the scales at just over 62 lbs and as you can see in the pics, she was struggling to hold it for pictures!

We snagged for a bit longer, with JD catching one smaller 38 lb Spoonie and decided to head up river to fish for the spawning Sand bass. We stopped in one area that I’d caught a decent number of Sand bass on a prior trip but were only able to catch a half dozen or so in an hour so we headed further up river in our quest for good numbers of willing Sand bass. As we passed slowly by one large tree that has been washed into the river and now part of the structure there, JD tossed a jig close to the lay down tree and immediately got hooked up with a very nice crappie (an unexpected surprise) so I positioned the boat next to the lay down tree and both JD & Ruth started pulling in crappie left & right. Most all of the crappie were in the 12-14 inch range, but we did catch and released a good number of just under 10” crappie as well. Needless to say, once we determined there was a good number of catchable crappie the Smith’s decided they’d rather fish for the Crappie instead of Sand Bass so we sat right there the remainder of the trip catching crappie left & right. We did lose track of the count thinking we had their limit, but we ended up being five fish shy of a two person limit for them (Ruth says she caught her limit & more) and a great day was still had by all!

Thank You JD & Ruth, I enjoyed the day on the water with you both and look forward to another fishing adventure with you again soon!

Steve “Hawker” King