Don't Give Up on that Fishing Hole

Many anglers make the mistake of trying a river spot that looks promising and then abandoning it when it fails to produce. What they don’t know is that what may have been a dead section of river can tomorrow be a hotspot. Smaller river fishing intensely affected by rainfall and far more dependent on the flows and water levels than are lakes. A rainstorm will raise a river as much as a few feet and completely change the nature of a given stretch of river overnight. What that means to the wise angler is that he needs to treat it like a new spot. A particular hole may hold a couple of carp and a bullhead for weeks with little sign of anything else. A gully-washer that nearly overflows the banks can go through with the result that this same hole in the riverbottom is now filled with scrappy smallmouth bass, rock bass and big sunfish. Another gully washer in a week or so can move these fish downstream and bring in the catfish.