carpslayer
New Member
The kids had no school on Friday so I snuck out of work early and bombed up to the San Juan on April 26 with my two boys. After finding the smallies starting to bed closer to home last weekend, we figured it would be wide open in the Juan. Once we got there, I was stunned to find so many people up that far. Luckily there is a lot more beach with the water being so low and we found a spot to throw our stuff off the boat and started fishing with a few hours of light left. The water around Neskahi was pretty chocolaty and the water temp was a hair over 70 degrees. It took us a minute to figure out a pattern and once we did, the catching began. It didn't take us long to find out that every smallie we kept was already spawned out. The senko bite continued the next morning and we had over 50 bass between us by 8 AM. Once the fish started moving deeper and the bite slowed, my oldest boy tied on a tube and started hammering them in the deeper water. With the new pattern found, we decided to leave fish to find fish. I wanted to get the boys on some bed fishing so we headed back down the Juan looking for cleaner, cooler water in hopes of finding some beds. We never did find a single bass on a bed(although the water was a little choppy) and I don't believe that we caught a bass that hadn't already spawned once but with that said, the fishing we found further down the Juan was amazing. The tube bite was no less than exceptional. As the clock hit 3:30 pm and my oldest boy counted out his 100th fish of the day and my youngest beat his goal of 20 by catching his 37th, we decided it was a good time to head home. What a great time and awesome memories. Estimated fish count, give or take a few, was approximately 190 smallmouth, 15 largemouth, 15 striper, 1 crappie and 1 carp.
