After eating way too many pancakes we went to stew leonards and did some grocery shopping. By the time were done the weather cleared and me and my buddy Erik decided to take the boat out and do a little fishing. Right around that time my mom and dad had called and asked if they could come up and fish from shore so I invited them to come out with us and they agreed.

We got out on the water around 530p and the wind was ripping from the south at about 20-25mph so fishing docks and shallow structure would be tough since our ski boat doesn’t have a trolling motor. I decided that anchoring south of submerged weed beds (6ft of water) and casting into the with senkos would be our best bet. It was a good choice. I landed a nice bass on my first cast and then everyone on the boat followed close there after. We stayed out for about 2 hours and landed about 25 fish in total. Most fish were 1-2lbs with a couple over 2 pounds.

Here are a few pics from our trip:

We didn’t get anything real big, but at least we had fun and the weather stayed nice…

Conditions:

Windy, partly cloudy, water temp 75 degrees, evening.

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.