Usually my father is the type of fisherman that is content with fishing from my backyard with a can of worms and a bobber, while the rest of us head out on the boat looking for the big boys, but last night he threw his hat into the proverbial ring and went looking for a trophy fish with me. We started out fishing Cedar Lake around 6:45 last night throwing senkos, I tried a 6 inch texas rigged black and red and he tried a 6 inch wacky rigged black and red.
The first 45 minutes was slow with my dad landing 2 rock bass and losing two nice largemouth by the boat (~2lbs each). I started with three or four keeper largemouths (biggest about 2.5lbs) and then the bite died down. I started throwing everything and anything I could find in my bag (spinnerbait, superfluke, red eye minnow, etc.) with no luck, meanwhile my father stayed with his wacky rigged senko since I thought it would give him the best chance of landing a large fish.
I decided to move to an area that had a large grass mat in about 6 feet of water next to a submerged rock pile. I tied on a yozuri banana boat, and just as we started fishing this area a couple of yahoos come flying in pulling up right next to us and start casting on top of our lures. To me this is unacceptable even on the river when fly fishing, let alone on a private lake and you are the only 2 boats out there. I bit my tongue and continued to “walk the dog” over the grass mats. On my 4th cast I had a huge strike that splashed water 3 feet in the air and the fight was on. I landed a 3lb laremouth right in front of the honey hole poachers.
My dad contiues to throw his senko around the submerged grass despite the ruckas being made by our neighboring fumbling fisherman getting their heavy jigs stuck in the weeds. I hear the scream of his drag as he says I’ve got something on here and it’s big. I jokingly tell him he’s stuck in the weeds, but put my rod down to give him a hand landing the fish. At that moment I see his fish flop right next to the offending boat and hear a muttered “holy sh*t” from one of the men on the boat.
The fight lasted about 2 minutes with a couple of close calls as the powerful bass made a few last runs under the boat and into the weeds. Finally I lipped it and brought it into the boat for a photo shoot. OOPS I forgot the camera… So you can all just imagine what a 24in 6+lb largemouth looks like. we released the fish to fight another day, and overheard the other fishermen say “Oh man they let it go”. Lucky for us and our lake that we caught that fish not the other guys fishing our territory, since it would probably be in a cooler or in the garbage right now.
We took a couple more casts in that area and then moved on as the other boat was encroaching even closer on us. We fished for another 20 minutes with no fish of note, and returned home under the setting sun and a cool breeze.
What a great night and a very good example of the fishing gods being friendly to those who fish infrequently. I’m looking forward to my next time out with my dad.
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