The Challenge of Fishing

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Darren & I hit the water this morning, looking for some smallie action. He usually fishes with his brother and a friend, but this time he would be alone. More fish for him today! It was a great start right out of the gate with his first 3 casts producing all good fish. We decided to skip most of the pics today and focus on the fishing. Only the true giants would have their “Kodak Moment!”

You could see that it was a weekend by all the boat traffic on the water. The end of the season was drawing near and any nice day would have them all out. Fishing most areas was like taking a number at a meat counter just to get a spot! Unfortunately some of them didn’t seem to care and just parked wherever they wanted, making it even more of a pain. We tried staying away from the crowds all day and fished comfortably by ourselves. It’s much more enjoyable this way!

We fished a mix of techniques today from shallow to deep and managed to catch fish wherever we stopped. Some places yielded big fish on almost every cast but not the true giants we were searching for. Between dodging boat traffic and fishing over very used waters they were just eluding us entirely. It was looking like a no pic kinda day!

After many, many quality fish throughout the day, time was finally running out. We were down to the last 15 minutes or so and I really wanted Darren to get a monster. Trying to find a place to fish without any other boat traffic was becoming even more difficult! I had 3 places in mind and after running towards them realized it wasn’t going to happen. I didn’t want to fish within 100 feet of them and decided to try an area I usually only hit when the water is much colder. We both made a cast and had hits immediately. Darren landed his and mine never got pinned. We were definitely on some fish now and hopefully there were more.

I decided to start packing things up to go when Darren slammed into some weight. At first we weren’t sure just how big it was, but then it tried to jump. It never really cleared the water and we still weren’t sure of its size! As I continued to put things away, Darren continued to have a hard time getting the fish to the boat and I decided to release the anchor mode on the electric. This would at least allow us to drift down to the fish in the current and hopefully land it. When I got close enough I realized why he was having such a hard time. It was a true giant! I quickly netted his bass and we were done! Now we had a fish to take some pics of and I shot a few good ones before the release.

We decided to try a few more casts back in the same area before leaving, but never got another hit. Right time, right place I guess! If it weren’t for all the boats today I probably wouldn’t have even stopped in the area to fish. What a way to end the day!

Despite the tournament like traffic, we managed to get into a load of good fish today. It may have been a challenge at times just to find open water but we made it work. I can only imagine how good it would have been if we were left to do it alone, like we had done so many times before in the past. I’m back out again tomorrow and hopefully between the rainy weather and it being a week day, there will be fewer boats on the water. Crossing my fingers for less traffic!