Sometimes I hate my radio

The weather looked good (not great)and fish were being caught. So I made the 3 hour trip to Pastrick Marina in East Chicago to try my luck. I got there really late around 7ish, I like to arrive and set up in the dark and head out at first light. I headed out full well knowing I only had until around 3pm to catch what I could and get off the lake before the storm hit. Well after the first hour the reports started coming over the UHF of a storm headed our way. The skies were dark and stormy looking over Chicago area so I believed it when I heard we might only have a couple hours to fish before it hit. After an hour my first rod went off, I got up and raced to it, turned the handle 4 times and the fish came unbuttoned. OK, 0 for 1, is not a great start especially when I'm in a good area and using almost the same lures everyone else was using. How do I know this? Well that's easy; they were all talking on the radio saying where they were, what they were using and how many they had in the box. The only thing they were doing differently was they had more rods out. Since I was by myself I could only run 3 rods. After a couple hours with no mention of the storm, I asked for an update over the radio. It seemed the storm was going to miss us to the south. So I trolled in and out of the pack and back the way I came. I finally had my rigger fire around 3pm. A nice coho that by all rights should've come off. I was checking another rod when my rigger rod went off. At first I was just going to try and land the fish with the line from the other rod trailing. But I didn't want to risk the fish getting tangled in it so I just threw it in the boat and untangled it after I landed the fish. When I finally got the fish in the boat I noticed the hook had come out and luckily got hooked in the gill plate. I'm sure it came off and got re-hooked while I was messing around with the other rod. So there I am 1 for 2 and the day is getting late so I decided to troll in towards the marina. After another couple hours my rigger rod went off so hard the rod tip slapped the water. By the time I got to it the fish was gone: 1 for 3 is just horrible for someone with sharp hooks. Generally speaking I don't miss fish once they're on I get 'em to the boat. Now I have messed up the landing part and let 'em come unbuttoned but that's a whole other story.

Lota miles for that one lone Coho

 

 Man did I work hard for that fish, well since my dues are paid maybe the next trip will be more bountiful.

Tippy again

I went back to Tippy this week and once again smashed 'em. Lots of largemouth, silvers and even a sunny on a smash shad.
The notable things that happened on this trip: crashed my boat and broke off the head housing on my trolling motor on the culvert I have to pass through just to get to the lake, saw a deer on my way in to the lake on top of a beaver dam, jumped onto a swim raft to stop the boat from hitting it and when I jumped back into my boat I lost my footing and ended up in the bottom of said boat, had a 24" pike follow in a deep #8 x-rap -- so switched poles and lures and had the same pike hit a hollow body swimbait on the first cast -- he only bit the tail and didn't touch the hook so I put on a stinger and only had him follow it after that.
This was a trip and a half.
Still caught fish though.

cookie cutter silvers - they were all about the same size

I wonder what next week will have in store for me?

Largemouth, Whitebass and Crappie

That's what I caught at Tippy this week. I started in the wee hours of the morning and caught fish all day, as a matter of fact I stopped counting after 20. I would like to say they were eating anything put in front of them but the fact of the matter is they were only interested in 4 lures. I caught all my fish on a strike king jerkbait, an x-rap deep jerkbait, a sexy dawg topwater and a spinnerbait. The bass just hammered them all day, I even quit early because I was exhausted. It was really a great day.

I caught more that a couple that were all this size

 I was waiting to get a really nice largemouth to get a pic of but the one I would've gotten a pic of I didn't even get into the boat. Right at the end of the day I caught and lost the biggest bass I have ever seen.
 I was casting when I felt a hit so I set the hook and started reeling the fish in. As the fish got closer and started to come up I was looking down when I saw an open mouth coming to the surface. If you put your thumbs and middle fingers together to form a 0 that's how big his mouth was. I could've put my fist in it, he was at least a 5 pound bass, but I'll never know. As soon as he was within inches of the surface the hook popped out and he went straight back down. Like I said it was the largest bass I have ever seen, the sight of loosing that fish still haunts me.