I finally made a trek down to the river at Boonesborough today. It's nice down there with the falls and beach and all. There were lots of folks fishing, but it didn't seem like anybody was doing much good.

I cast a beetle spin for a while with no luck.

I slapped on some of my homemade dough bait, with the same results.

Finally, as it was starting to get dark, I put on a little bluegill that I had frozen from a different fishing trip. This produced a bite within about 5 minutes, but I missed the hook set. I cast him back out and had another bite within a couple of minutes. Again, I missed the fish. I figured it might be small catfish grabbing my bluegill and they weren't able to get the whole thing in their little mouths. So, it's time for cut bait.

Again and again and again, I missed numerous bites even after letting the fish run with the cut bait.

Finally, I let one run with it for about a minute and when I set the hook, the line snapped clean off! When I reeled that in, I checked the end of the line and it was badly frayed. Time for the steel leaders and the treble hooks!

DANGED IF IT WASN'T GAR! Not just one or two, either. There had to have been a bunch of them, as many bites as I got. I did manage to finally catch one that was about 3 feet long or so.

Anybody have a recipe for gar?

It doesn't look very promising at the ol' river lately.