Little Saluda River Tour and Fishing Trip

Well, my weekend fishing plans didn't pan out quite like I had hoped for. Things were tough...I mean REALLY tough. I can't remember a trip in recent times that was as slow as it was for us Saturday morning. We fished long and hard and didn't have much of anything to show for it.

The weekend started Friday evening when my good friend came over to get ready for a Saturday morning trip with me. With a few hours of daylight left, we decided to hit the water and do a little scouting. We fished several spots and didn't do much with the fish. We had one keeper crappie and about a 2 lb catfish that was a lot of fun on the jig pole. We called it an evening around 8:00 PM and gave our two fish to a lady fishing off the dock at the landing. She was tickled to death to get them. Here's my buddy with his hand-size keeper from the afternoon.



Saturday morning came and we hit the water around 6:45 AM with high hopes. Things started out slow, but that has been the norm recently. I was expected for things to pick up once the sun got up good, but it never did. We fished till 12:30 PM and had caught a total of 2 throwbacks and 1 keeper. And the keeper came at about 12:15 PM. It was a long morning on the water needless to say. We jigged, casted, and fished minnows under slip corks all morning. Water temps were 80-85 everywhere we went and we covered a lot of water. We fished from the Little River Landing Bridge all the way around up past Black's Bridge in the Big River. We fished docks, logs, brush piles, and every bridge we passed along the way....nothing.

With fishing so slow, we decided to joy ride. We made a pit stop by the dock and picked up a few cold beverages and Ranger, our new 8 week old Boykin pup. This was his first boat ride and boy did he have a good time! Once he found out that he could jump off the front of the boat that's all he wanted to do as is evident in the pictures.







My buddy had never been WAY up the river so I decided to give him a tour. We idled as far up the river as we could go before a tree across the river blocked it up. There's some pretty scenery up there. In our 2.5 hour, 5.5 mile, journey up the river we only saw one other boat. It was a relaxing voyage! Below are a few pictures of the scenery

The first couple are from an oxbow that was loaded with grass and button bushes...Looks like bream heaven!



















The log jam that turned us around:



After our pitiful trip on Saturday I had to have a redemtion trip Monday afternoon after work. Things hadn't picked up a whole lot, but it was definitely better than Friday and Saturday. I fished for 2 hours and concentrated on locations close to the house. I caught a few throwbacks and wound up finding 4 keepers that were all pretty solid fish. It was nice to feel that tug and although the fishing was still slow the fish that I caught bit and fought aggressively. Below is the big fish from the evening.