'Twas the Day of the Firetiger Bomber Square A

I tried topwaters, jerkbaits, spinnerbaits, and the Johnson silver minnow, all to no avail, so decided to tie on the Bomber crankbait, and business soon picked up. I pulled two off a submerged log on back-to-back casts, then later in the day pulled one more off a different submerged log. I also found one buried in a series of small stumps.

All four fish were keepers, but the three best weighed 1-5, 1-6 and 1-14 (the one pictured here). The fish came out of West Neck. I decided to stay there, given the low water level that greeted me this morning. It was only at the joint in the ramp when I launched but was coming in strong when I pulled the boat out of the water this afternoon.

One other trailer was in the parking lot when I left this morning, but there were about a half-dozen vehicles on the scene when I quit this afternoon. Water temp at about 9 o'clock was 40 degrees, compared to 57 at about 3 o'clock.

While my initial plan was to investigate some potential spots for this coming Saturday's tourney, that all changed with the low water. Quite frankly, I haven't even committed yet to fishing Saturday, given the weather forecasts I've heard today. I'm just going to wait and see what the predictions are come Friday, and I've talked to a couple others who are planning to do the same thing.

Even though it was a bit on the cool side, today was a real joy, compared to the mess we had to deal with last Saturday. The light winds hung around all day until about the same time I pulled my boat out. My timing couldn't have been better if I had planned it that way.