A Year Later, the Results Are Very Similar

If you've been following my blog for a while, you very well may remember the logo above that my friend, Charlie Bruggemann, put together for our first-ever shootout on Oct. 30, 2013. On that occasion, Charlie boated 7 bass and 1 striper, with his biggest bass weighing in at 1-8. I, on the other hand, boated 3 bass and 3 white perch, with the biggest bass a 3-14. Per our agreed upon terms on that occasion, Charlie was limited to fishing all soft plastics, and I had to stay with crankbaits all day.

That outing was the first and, until today, the only time Charlie and I had fished together. Today's trip, though, wasn't labeled as a shootout, nor were we either one restricted to the type of lures we could fish. Instead, it was just a friendly get-together between a couple of fellow bloggers, and we fished any and all kinds of baits.

Charlie's final tally today was 8 bass and 2 white perch, with his biggest bass going about 1.25 or 1.50 lbs. His productive lures were a crankbait and a jig. My total was 2 bass, with one that probably matched Charlie's biggest. I caught both of them on a crankbait.

Since we were just out for the fun of it, we didn't bother to weigh our fish or take pictures of any of 'em. Our bottom-line motivation for being on the water was simply to get our licks in one more time before the weather takes a nose-dive, as all the local weather forecasters are promising.

We weren't exactly surprised to find that, as the fog gradually wore off this morning and the sun came out so brightly, that several other anglers joined us on West Neck Creek. When we launched at 8 o'clock this morning, however, there wasn't another vehicle in the parking lot.

One of those other anglers we saw today was Jim Bauer. He finished the day with a total of 9 bass, including 5 keepers that weighed approximately 7 lbs. All of his fish fell for a crankbait, too.

Meanwhile, "Doc" Murdock's pursuit of largemouth yielded two fish, with one weighing 1-6, the other 1-7. He caught both on a crankbait. His cellphone app showed the following conditions at the time: water temp - 58 degrees, air temp - 56 degrees, barometer - 30.01 inches and rising, winds - WNW at 12 mph, and relative humidity - 62 percent.

Charlie and I also ran across Bob Glass fishing the upper end of the creek this afternoon. As I recall, he told us he had caught 5 bass, all on a Senko worm--the same bait that was so productive for him all summer. He just had lost a nice fish when we met up with him. "He straightened my worm hook," said Bob.




Given that everybody we talked to had fish, I can't help but chalk today up as a success. Charlie put it in perspective like this: "At least, we postponed the rust for a little while longer."