Walking Creek

Since February, I've been making visits to a small stream I know, waiting for the smallmouth bass to move up from the main river and start looking for spawning sites. While I don't think the warm weather is here to stay yet, I had a feeling that the past week has been nice enough to get the fish moving.
Indeed, I found some fish that had begun nesting, and were big enough to catch. Ironically, none of them were smallmouth, which is all I had expected to find.
When I saw this fish (above) in the water, I thought for sure it was a smallmouth, but when I landed it I was suprised by the dark spots along it's lateral line. Typically, this kind of marking is found on largemouth bass but this fish definitely wasn't a largemouth. Based on the temperature of the water, I'm pretty sure this was actually a spotted bass, the first one I can remember catching.A nice little rock bass. These fish are also called "red eye," for obvious reasons.
This bluegill was the hardest fighter of the day. Lot's of people claim that "such-and-such a species is pound for pound the hardest fighting fish" but I wouldn't be surprised if a rigorous study handed that label to these little fellows.