I Missed More Than I Caught, But...

It still was a good day, as far as I'm concerned. This fish, which weighed in at 1-12, was my best of the day. I also got two that tipped the scales at 1-6, one that weighed 1-1, and a 14-incher that only went 0-15. I weighed this latter fish three times, because I couldn't believe that a 14-incher could be such a lightweight, but the scales showed the same numbers each time.

I also caught three dinks and had a sixth keeper bass at the side of the boat, but he came unbuttoned as I tried to swing him into the boat. I lost track after about a dozen blowups on my Bandit wakebait that ended without a hookup. These topwater strikes were fairly consistent until nearly noon. I then shifted to a Strike King XS-1 and kept getting hits until I quit at 3 o'clock this afternoon.

During the heat of the action this morning, I tossed my wakebait between a couple of stumps where I just had seen a fish swirl. I let it rest just a couple seconds, then twitched the bait, and a fish with some real muscle snatched it. Unfortunately, I saw it was one of those ol' toothy critters, so I dropped a lot of slack in the line, the grindle jumped, and I got my bait back without a struggle.

Most of the water I saw today still had a murky color, but I did find a little clear water, which was where I caught most of my fish. My hope is that we have fairly stable weather patterns between now and Classic weekend, so that the water everywhere will have a chance to clear up and stay that way. If that happens, there should be lots of fish caught by everyone. To date, I've received negative feedback from three of the Classic-qualified anglers, but that still leaves the potential for a field of 35 anglers taking part in our season-ender Oct. 12-13.