Practicing for a tournament this coming Sunday, Brian Cronk and I got rained on after we had spent less than two hours on the lake. It came down heavily. My rain jacket didn't keep me dry and Brian's slacks were soaked. Both of us got chilled. We also didn't think to bring ziplock bags for our phones. They actually never got wet, but we weren't sure if the rain would stop. As it turned out, the skies cleared shortly after we left, but temps had come down some.
Brian's Chatterbait took the first hit, and then one of the Adam Mihara custom topwater plugs I own got blasted. I fired off a Yum Dinger from another rod to place the worm where the hit had come, and I came up with our first bass, 14 3/4 inches. I kept fishing the plug, the surface of the lake yet remaining calm, but a dark line of clouds approached. I caught a 15 3/4-incher that prompted Brian to switch out for a Zara Spook, which soon got hit by a bass that measured 18 1/2 inches. Big chunky fish that must have weighed three-and-a-half pounds. It leapt three times. The photograph does no justice to it.
And then a breeze came up and it rained hard. I kept getting my plug out there, but the only two hits came as the electric motor took us back to the ramp, Brian trolling the Chatterbait.
I don't like this particular lake, which I plan on naming in my post Sunday, but today I enjoyed myself out there on it. The lake is shallow everywhere. About four feet. Here and there submerged stumps exist, but you only know about them when you get snagged. A myth exists of weedbeds in the middle of the 168 circular acres, but I believe that's all it is--myth. I had hoped we'd motor out there today and see if we could find any. That of course would be a game changer, if weeds exist. Otherwise, the lake is mud-bottomed and full of carp. Disgusting.
I did catch two bass pretty quickly, and Brian's was a good one. Whether or not a good number of bass can be caught here on a six hour outing, maybe Sunday will show us. Then again, maybe not. The lake did feel like it fished pretty fast today, but we fished a total of about two hours and caught only three bass to show for it.
Twenty-mile-per-hour wind is expected Sunday, and that won't make it easy, though at least that's not the lake's fault.
