Jubilee Creek 8/21 Collabo with LH

After my initial solo success at Jubilee College State park, Clif from Lunker Hunt asked if I would be interested in taking him back there to hunt some lunker chubs. The emails that followed culminated in the two of us meeting up in the not-so-early morning near the same area that I put into the creek before.

I was rigged up with the Pflueger Arbor reel/Sufix braided line that OBN sent me to review. (Which I want to use at least one more time in a more appropriate manner before submitting my official review. That heavy of a setup isn't done justice by flinging small jigs in a tiny creek. Sorry bout the wait on that OBN!) I had originally tied on a 3" white grub, hoping for something bigger than last time.

After tromping directly through poison ivy (pretty sure I did last time too so hopefully I don't break out too bad), I scooted myself down into the muddy water. Clif followed and we got down to fishing.

Well, I got down to casting and Clif got down to catching. I want to say his first or second cast had a creek chub on the line. A handful of casts later had another. Around that time I was second guessing my choice of a larger lure. I switched up to a Beetlespin, which had worked pretty well on my last outing. After a few more casts and a few more fish caught by Clif, I was second guessing the length of my flourocarbon leader. Clif offered up the smaller grub he was using to see if that could turn the tide along with a new longer leader.

For a while, it didn't. Then we came across a nice tree that spanned the width of the creek and caused a nice deep hole with lots of cover. Finally I got a bite and caught a fish:

Chub!

By this point Clif was in double digits so I gave up on any notion of keeping up and just focused on trying to catch the monster smallmouth we both were hoping was hunkered down in one of those deep holes.  No such luck but there were a bunch of Chubs:

Sorry for the lack of photos.  I hesitate to mess around with my phone too much when I'm ankle deep in muddy water.  Need to buy a waterproof camera.

A fish or two later, I snagged up and snapped my flouro leader. Clif graciously offered up another grub, which I promptly snagged and broke off as well. Rather than just use the jigheads I had in my pocket, I kept taking Clif's. My bad, I feel kinda crappy about it.

Anyway, eventually the bite slowed down and we moved on; stopping and offering a few casts any time we couldn't see the bottom. We caught a few fish as we went along.

We came across a pretty sketchy spot and had to pause for a minute to figure out how to get across a tangle of fallen trees. Overheard:

Clif: "Are you very agile?"

Me: "I'm the most agile 470lb man you know, I guarantee it."

I then played fat guy parkour, slowly hopping awkwardly from branch to branch and then half-fell/half-jumped to the ground. I didn't blow out a knee so it was a successful navigation.

We reached my walking limit sometime later. As we were fishing our furthest-out spot, a voice drifted into hearing. A voice booming out in song. Half hymns/half seemingly made up lyrics such as "I love this trail, I've been on this trail all my liiiiiiife." We started heading back just after he passed. A little further upstream, the Singing Horseman lead a troop of teenagers on horses into the stream and stopped there.

We stopped rougly 20-30 yards from the group, not knowing the protocol was for walking into a big group of horses. (Especially since 2-3 of the horses seemed ready to lay the equine smackdown on each other. Stomping around, chasing one another, etc.)

Eventually they moved on and we started the hike back. Clif fished his way back and caught a few more. I didn't have much left in me to really fish but I was grateful for the periodic breathers.

 We ended up walking a total of 2.2 miles. (I would put up the MyTracks map but I forgot to turn it off so you'd see it make a beeline down the road at 55mph for 10 more miles.)

Between the two of us we must've caught around 30 fish. (Clif with 2/3rds of those) Not the biggest fish but fun nonetheless. We're planning on doing something similar soon but in one of Clif's top secret spots. Maybe I can get my elusive smallie! Thanks again to Clif for putting up with me holding him back and losing all this lures.

Did anybody else get out fishing this weekend? Have any luck?