smallmouthed bass one day. This in Idaho on The Snake River. Also close to big time steelhead and salmon fishing.
This poor bastard had never really gotten into any good fishing in his life and was about 40. That's hard to do growing up in freakin' Idaho! His dad wasn't into it and his best fisherman buddy is like a trout fly fishing afficianado (he thinks) but really sucks at it! They never did any good when they went out.
I take him doen to one of my "secret" bass holes. Not much of a secret really and you'd laugh if you saw it. It's just a public dock right on the Snake and right in the middle of town. People fish there all the time but very few know what I know. They never catsh anything worthwhile. I go there at the buttcrack of dawn, haul in some nice smallies and never let anyone see me packing them out if I can help it. I take him there and we get into them something fierce! He can't believe it! A two pound smallmouth on an ultralight rig is a pretty fair fight. You get one much bigger than that and it's a tossup and you better have a net to land it. Those fish go nuts and are mighty tasty! He was hooked!
Then a few weeks later I took him to what I call "The Motherlode Hole". I once had a guy stalk me, parking down the street on a Saturday when he was pretty sure I would go fishing and follow me there to find out where it was. He knew I was getting a lot big bass somewhere and didn't even have a boat. That day was one week before the bass derby on the river and we got ten over two pounds between us. The biggest about four and a half and several in the three pound range. Not astounding to some guys that have access to trophy smallmouth fisheries, but had we scored like that the next weekend, we would have finished first and second place in the derby, no matter how we divided the fish up.
This guy is a painting contractor and became obsessed. It was almost like bass were cocaine! He'd rather fish than work. He was out there all the time. Completely decimated my favorite spots! Of course the fish come back eventually and I didn't dare show him a few other good places after that. The great thing was he didn't like to clean or fillet them and gave all the fish to me anyway.
He came down eventually and returned to more like normal but he did buy a nice boat. We're now trying to get into more of the big fish fishin', going after the salmon but haven't done real well yet. We'll get it going I'm sure.
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