The forecast was for such ferocious North winds, to attempt fishing or kayaking anywhere near a river mouth would be insane. There is a river where you can paddle up a winding dredged walled in channel past stately houses to a beautiful clear wild winding river. Launching at the river mouth was a challenge. The paddle up river over the deep still channel was exhilarating with that wind at your back. The water levels were down over a foot this year and in the lower part of the natural river, I could see some fleeing bass in the deep runs. In a shallow weedy side Channel I got one got Smallmouth on a 2/0 Stealth Diver with rubber legs I got one stray smallmouth. Also a speedy small fish blasted the big Stealth Diver and I got the very small Pike on a cast back, he flopped of the deck to escape his photo op.
Further upstream past some swift currents and shallow riffles there was lots of moss growth and there were no bass or beds. Back down stream, I snuck into a shallow man made nook out of the current. I cast where I had hooked big bass on beds in the past. The riffled surface hid me from the fish and I was able to hook some really big bass. A Subtle floating diver was key here, retrieved with little short twitches, waiting for it to bob back to the surface before the next twitch. The biggest ones got off on powerful runs or high head shaking leaps. The better ones I landed flopped off the deck of the kayak and shook the barbless hook before I could get a picture.
I continued to fish downstream using the same subtle topwater presentation and got some fish in difficult gusty wind conditions.
