It's Always About How Well You Execute...

And I know a couple of guys who seemed to have a problem in that area today. They found fish, but getting them in the boat was an altogether different story.

Just ask Skip, who, as shown here, is holding up one of the seven fish that he caught today. This bass weighed either 1-15 or 2-5--sorry, but I'm just not sure which one this is.

Seven isn't a bad number, by any stretch, but in Skip's words, "I also lost a bunch."

As he's been doing for the past few outings, Skip continued using soft plastics today. Instead of the swimbaits that have been his go-to choice, though, his preferred bait this trip was a prototype Senko in bubblegum color. Skip has been melting down different colored Senkos for some time now, then repouring them. It was quite evident to me this afternoon that he was pretty tickled to have caught all of his fish today on one of his own hand-poured worms.

The other guy who had a problem with execution today was yours truly. I finished the day with five bass, the biggest this 1-8. I also had a 1-5, a 1-0, and two 12-inchers.

In one sense, I felt lucky to have boated five today, given the annoying problems I encountered throughout the day. When I wasn't trying to catch "tree fish," I was rescuing my lure from shoreline grass. And then there was the occasion when somehow, and I still haven't figured it out yet, braid from a knot I had picked out of my baitcaster got wrapped around my shoelace. I ended up having to cut the ends off my lace to free the line. That incident was particulary annoying, considering that the laces and the shoes both were new.

Like Skip, I lost my share of fish today, but I really can't complain too loudly. The end result could have been a whole lot worse than it was.

Incidentally, I was fully expecting to see a fair number of snakes today, after Jerry's report of yesterday, but I instead was pleasantly surprised not to come across a single one. With these warmer days, though, I know it's only a matter of time.

I've learned from Skip that I shouldn't refer to his prototype soft-plastic creation as a "senko," but rather a "skinko," which he arrived at after dropping the "p" from Skip and the "se" from Senko. If the rest of the baits he poured don't work, "I can drop the 'k' and add a 't' to make 'stinko,'" Skip joked. He also clarified that the baits he was using the other day indeed were hand-poured but were not melted down. They instead were his own scientific creation he came up with by using a mathematical equation of plastisol, salt and anise extract. Skip's wife, Leslie, has her own thoughts about stuff like this. She simply says, "You have way too much time on your hands."