Belews Creek 11/30/2012

First fishing trip to Belews. I was pleasantly surprised that it's not as far from my house as I thought; only about 45 minutes to the Pine Bluff Ramp. Got a late start after I thought I was going to have to cancel, got on the water about 10am. I drove around a bit looking at various areas, and looking for bait. There was some up in the creek where the ramp is, but not much that I saw in the few other places I looked. I did see a couple small bass on the ends of some of the trees laying in the water near the ramp (little buck bass). Fished a short time before getting a text...

I had invited Jim (Brontwisterjim) of NCangler to join me if he was able; he got free and I picked him up at the ramp at 11. We headed up to try some of the skinny water in the upper part of Belews Creek, but didn't pick up any interest or see any sign of bass. We moved out to the laydowns where I had seen the small fish earlier, but didn't get any hits. We talked about a couple of options, and decided to try some standing timber in the back of a secondary creek arm that he knew about.



I was running out of time and we'd fished a few hours with nothing to show, till I hooked up in the last 45min of the day with a nice little 2.5 to 3lb chunker in about 20 feet of water not far from the timber. I don't have a picture because I practiced early-release conservation (fish took off after coming boat side and shaking the hook at the last moment). Got one more nice hit and a brief pull on a decent fish that got free because I fail-boated the hookset. I was expected back home so had to call it.

Jim is a gracious partner and good company; I enjoyed fishing with him today. I was happy to have caught a fish on my first day in a lake I know nothing about, had good company, and I learned some things. So overall it was a pretty good day.

Sam

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