The One that Got Away

I had Stephanie & her husband Keith out today on local water for some bass action. They had hit the timing just perfect last season for the deep water bite and hoped it would be as good. Unfortunately with the cool water this season, the real deep never actually occurred. We would be moving around plenty to try and find fish today! I launched the boat and ran in a thick fog by GPS to our starting location. Visibility wasn’t great but we could see about 50 feet in front of us at times, making it less dangerous. I had them both throwing twitch baits for suspended bass and Keith locked up quickly. A chunky 3 pounder came aboard and was immediately released back without any pics. We were searching for the giants here and soon after he had the one we wanted. Although we never got to see the fish, I knew it was big by the way it was acting. Instead of taking to the air, it sounded to the deep water nearby and never really came back up. Just the weight of the fish showed me that she was big and soon after the hooks just pulled out. With a light drag set on the reel, it required a little more finesse and a lengthy battle was expected. It was too bad that a couple of the hooks opened enough to release this fish as I’m pretty sure it was a real trophy! This fish would be haunting Keith for quite some time as I know the feeling! We resumed fishing and hoped for another chance but only small fish were taken. I moved around and when the fog lifted, switched gears completely. Another area had concentrations of largemouth and I had them into fish immediately. Plenty of bass were taken here up to 3.5 pounds in the next hour, before they became educated. Sunshine was upon us now and the temps were rising so another move was in order. I had them casting blades over weed flats in hopes of some aggressive smallies. Flat calm conditions and bluebird skies had the fish locked in tightly as we were about to see. Several big fish were tucked into the weeds and didn’t want to move on the lures. A slight adjustment had Keith hooked up quickly as we went to slower moving baits. We actually got to see the take as the bass opened her mouth and sucked it in. A really decent fish was Keith’s reward and soon after, having its picture taken! A few more good ones were also taken from here on a couple of different presentations. I really wanted to find some aggressive fish for them to get into and had to leave this area when they just stopped biting. Back to the blades and an offshore rock & weed flat and it was "Hammer Time"! Keith pounded several medium sized fish here and Stephanie missed a few as well. Although it wasn’t loaded, it did provide some action on this difficult day. We slid into another shallower spot and watched all kinds of fish just swim around. A few of them took the jigs but most didn’t even look twice! With limited time remaining in the day, I decided to go real deep and brought them back to where we crushed them last year. We drifted over several deep spots and almost every time I marked fish, someone hooked up. Unfortunately they weren’t stacked up anywhere but they did pick a few more before we called it a day. I had an issue with the kicker shifter and needed to have it looked at before I headed home. Fortunately it was just a linkage that had popped out and was fixed in less than five minutes! Despite the rather bizarre day of fishing, they managed to catch a bunch of fish from various depths. On top of that, they have another story of "The One That Got Away"!!