Abbreviated Day Yields Only 3 Fish

When I left the house this morning, I planned to spend 8 hours on the water, but that all changed mid-morning when I received a call from Wayne, my boat mechanic. I recently had asked him to bleed my trim/tilt again because it was sounding worse than my old bones do every time I get out of bed or a chair any more. He told me he was going to be at the marina about noon to take care of an issue with Skip's trolling motor and that, if I wanted, he could/would fix my problem, too.

With the tourney this Saturday, I decided to go ahead and let Wayne take care of things. Accordingly, I left Albright's about noon for West Neck. The ramp just had cleared when I got there, so I quickly recovered my rig, drove to the nearest shade trees, and let Wayne get started. Now the trim/tilt sounds good again.

With the shortened day, however, I only managed to boat three bass--a couple of dinks and the 1-5 pictured here. I caught all three fish in the same stretch that has been good to me for a couple of weeks in a row now, and they all went for my INT.

I missed about five blow-ups, so I can't, in good conscience, blame a slow day for not having more fish. In all honesty, my timing some days just genuinely sucks, as was the case today.

Once I got home and checked my email, I learned that my totals weren't that much different from those of Charlie, Ron, or his son, Alex. Charlie went to the PAWMA Whitehurst track and fished three different creeks. Only the first had fish, and they were not very big, He ended up with four: a 1-6, 1-4, and two dinks.

Meanwhile, Ron said he dropped off Alex at Tecumseh this morning on his way to work. Three hours later, he received a text from his son, saying he just had landed a nice 1-lb 6-oz. bass.  Another hour and a half later, he got another text with news that Alex had boated a 4-7 (pictured right) on a hollow-body frog.

Before his day was over, Alex had logged five bass and also missed a few fish, including a bowfin.

Ron picked up Alex a little after 3 o'clock and dropped him at home, then loaded up his own gear and headed to Milldam Creek to get in a little fishing of his own.

"The wind was awful," said Ron. He fought the grass and chop for a few hours, all for a single 1-lb. 5-oz. bass and some missed blow ups. "Oh well," he thought, "at least the sunset was beautiful."

While headed back to the launch site, Ron was throwing to the cypress trees along the way. As he was passing the last feeder creek, he made one last cast that landed dead center of the feeder creek's channel, where he could work his Whopper Plopper without catching grass on the treble hooks.

A fish suddenly slammed his bait, and the battle was on. "Turned out to be a heart-pounding, drag-screaming, big ol' bass (see photo left)," said Ron. He tipped the scales at 6 lbs. 1 oz. and measured 23.5 inches--good enough for a citation. "Needless to say," explained Ron, "I was ecstatic with my personal best."

He went on to note that the Whopper Plopper has become his go-to bait. It replaces the Heddon Chug'n Spook in that capacity.