What does a 30 inch musky, a 3 pound smallmouth and a 18 inch rainbow trout all have in common? The answer is they were all caught by me today. I got up early and decided to wade in front of the dam on Cinco de Mayo. I hadn't been fishing more than a few minutes when I hooked up with a musky. I was using an in-line spinner with a willow leaf blade that I tied to imitate a shad. I hooked up with this guy in roughly the same location that I hooked "The Beast" a couple of years ago. Musky seem to patrol this shallow weed bed near the dam in early spring. He put up a tremendous fight. As I reeled him next to me I gripped him under the gill plate to get a closer look and take a measurement. Catching these guys never gets old and having missed out on my annual musky last year this one puts me back on track. I continued to fish, catching a few red eye and average smallmouth. The water conditions were great, albeit a little high which made wading challenging at times. The bass bite was starting to take off as I cast out over a nearby eddie. Almost the instant the lure hit the water a marauding smallmouth ambushed it. This guy had some decent size. He was about 17 1/2 to 18 inches and right at 3 pounds. As I continued to fish, switching to a in-line crayfish spinner now, I picked up several more bass. Wading down the island bank opposite the channel known as "the arm" I hooked up with something that had as much fight as anything else that I had caught that day. To my surprise it was a stocked rainbow trout washed down from the Bluestone River, a good 3 pounds plus. I've caught hundreds of these guys when hiking in at Pipestem in the winter, but in the New River in Spring; this was defiantly a first. I ended the day with 21 fish included the 3 brutes mentioned above. The way this day was going it's hard to tell what I would have caught had I kept going.
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