I was goofing around at a few ponds yesterday, catching some largemouths on a fluke, when I decided to go bother Phil a little bit. He's always up to something unusual, and this time it was transplanting some smallmouths from one pond to another. He has several top secret smallmouth ponds in Champaign County started, and the idea was to find some breeders for another. It sounded fun, so we loaded a couple of five-gallon buckets and a tub that must have been about 25 gallons in my truck and set out for a smallmouth pond.
The first pond we visited is being overtaken with largemouths. Fishing was slow, but we found some largemouths on the windblown side. Phil was especially hot on his rattle trap, and his new KVD inspired retrieve. However, we couldn't find any smallies and took off for a second pond.
I walked directly up to a traditionally hot corner, and on the second cast my tube was sharply bitten. After a crazy fight I landed a smallie that Phil taped at 19 inches with a pinched tail. In the next hour, I picked up a second around 16 inches, and Phil got a nice 18 incher. It looked like it was time to go, and it might be one of those extremely rare times when I catch more smallies than Phil. However, he had very generously given me the windlown side, critical on such a sunny day, while he fished in the calm. Phil then took his rattle trap down the windblown side and rapidly picked up 3 more smallies, including another 19 incher, to give us a total of 6 smallmouths, all at least 16 inches.
We had them swimming in about 25 gallons of cool water while we drove them to their new home. En route we decided it would be fun to have a picture with them. As we were passing an Asian grocery store that is owned by some friends, I decided to pull over and have someone take a photo. Vivia, the very friendly high schooler who seems like she has worked there since she was 5 years old, came out to take the picture shown above of 5 of the 6 fish. Then we quickly dunked the fish in the tub and made for their new home. All 6 swam off in good health.
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