I fished a full day yesterday, Wednesday 4/22 with Frank James.  My first time meeting Frank and really enjoyed fishing with him.  It turned out to be a special day.  Frank couldn't make it until later in the morning, but I was on the water by 7 am.  Words do not do justice to how beautiful this property is.  So, the fishing…....I started off with a quick under on a spinner bait.  Then went to plastics and continued to catch unders (10-12").  About 10:00 I finally hooked a nice fish but when it jumped and shook it's head, it threw the hook.  Hard to say how big, but I'm sure it was at least 6 plus pounds.  Then Frank joined and we continued to catch unders.  Frank likes to fish ultralight, so he was catching 2 fish for every one I caught.  I was throwing mostly a weightless Senko and a Rage Tail Craw.

At about 2:00 lightning finally struck for me on the Rage Tail Bama Craw color:  It wasn't a hard hit, in fact I think the fish engulfed the bait and swam straight at the boat.  I just noticed slack, and that my line felt funny.  I reeled a couple of cranks of slack and slightly lifted the rod tip and I definitely felt some movement…...so a couple more quick cranks to reduce slack and I set the hook.  I knew it was a good fish right away.  It made a couple of good runs but I managed to keep control until I got it to the side of the boat.  Frank offered to net it and I declined.  Probably a bad decision in hind sight but I didn't realize what I had until I lipped it.  Holy crap, then I knew I had never had my fingers in the mouth of a fish this big.  Put her on the scale, praying to see a 10…......and it was 12.1.  Wow.  I'm shaking now.

I am in the contest so I'm frantically trying to get a quick picture (thanks Frank for getting a couple of really good shots) then put her on the stick, threw my sunglasses down and snapped a couple of quick pics with my phone.  Got her back in the water, revived her for just maybe 5 seconds until she flipped her tail and was gone.  I can't say for sure how long she was now with all of the excitement.  I thought she was right at 24", but the sunlight in the pictures is too bright and the numbers on my measuring stick are not visible.  Oh well, I'm not going to complain that I can't get her entered.  I have been fishing hard for the last 3 years, on many of our premium properties, trying to get a double digit. Today, I am very satisfied, and feel blessed.

So, about an hour later in just about the same spot (the landowner later told us there was a brush pile there) I hooked my 3rd nice fish of the day.  Again on a Rage Tail.  This was swam sideways with my line.  Got it up to the boat, went to lip it and it got off.  Can't say how big, but again would guess 6-8 lbs.

We did not actually count the culls, but we gave the bucket to the landowner.  I would guess 30ish under 16"........and 3 great fish.  The landowner said that is what you get in this lake, and that you want to target the bigger fish to avoid catching the smaller.

Posted By: Marty Newman