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.