Early evening wiper fun

A while back, I was catching wipers on live shad, and I wondered if they would go for a live bluegill instead.  Well, I recently got my answer. 

After a hard day of parenting and husbanding, I decided to take an hour or so of time in the evening to go fishing.  I headed back to the Lake Monroe spillway and found quite a few people enjoying some late day outside time.  The water was high and rushing out of the spillway again due to some recent rain, and the only decent fishing spot that was open was quite near the spillway and hard current.  Honestly, it wasn't a bad spot, and I'll take what I can get.

I started working my Zoom Super Fluke/jig head combo and was rewarded with a strike after a few casts.  The fish was using the current to his advantage though, so I ended up fighting a wiper and a force of nature.  I managed to work the beast back toward my spot on the bank, but he spit the hook before I could even see him.  My lure was mangled from the fight, but I rehooked it and went back to fishing.

Things slowed down for a bit, but I was able to soak in some of the scenery.  The white water was nice, and occasionally, a fish would jump.  At one point, I saw what looked like an Asian carp, which is bad news because they're invasive and known to ruin fisheries.  I'm old and half-blind though, so what do I know?  I also got to see a wiper chasing a good-sized panfish (probably a bluegill), so that answers my question.  Now, I just need to catch some bluegill for bait one of these days...

Anyway, fishing picked back up, and I managed to hook into another water donkey.  It felt like a monster, but most of that was the water current.  When I finally managed to land him, it was just a skinny little guy (compared to my previous wipers):

You can see some of the white water I was dealing with in this picture:

A skinny fish is better than no fish at all though, so I'm not complaining.  I released this one back to go get fattened up and started fishing again.  Eventually, I hooked into another behemoth from the deep and reeled it all the way to my feet, but my line snapped before I could net it.  One of these days, I'm going to learn to re-tie my terminal tackle after a hard fight...

At this point, I was losing the light and didn't have a head lamp.  While others continued to work the water, I called it a day and drove home.  I didn't have any fish in the cooler this time, but I still had fun.