Weekend luck at fulltimefishing.com

With not much time this weekend, I wanted to try a lake that I had not visited for months. Started off early yesterday by braking my spinning rod while closing the trunk, great!!! After a few early morning mumbling and drowning my misery on a nice cup of java, I headed off to the spot.

Started off with a clown X-rap for about 30 minutes. Didn’t seem the fish were active so I slowed it down a bit with a black tiki worm. Few minutes into the slow technique and I feel a small tug. Set the hook and bring in a 1# largemouth. Threw it back in and continued to find a pattern. What pattern? Didn’t get any other bites. Decided to tie on a chrome blue Rat-L-Trap and ripped it through the vegetation but no takers. Slowed it down do a crawl and as soon as I did that, I nailed this nice 3# largemouth.

Stayed with the Rat-L-Trap and was able to continue the slow pattern hooking another two 1# within 30 minutes. A total of 4 fish within two hours, not bad. Called it a morning and headed back to my responsibilities but I had it set to return to the spot Sunday morning.

This morning got to the lake at about 7am and immediately started with the Rat-L-Trap and a Gambler little otter. Lost a few hook sets on the little otter; turned out the hook was really dull. Switched the hook, retied and hooked into what I thought was a monster. To my amazement, the 6+ fish was nothing more than a dink. The fight was good and not once did it jump, staying deep. When I pulled it up, it was a 1/2# with some mono stuck on it’s tail dragging a plastic bag. Preformed an outpatient or out water surgery and removed the mono/bag and set it on it’s merry way.

The wind picked up on Sunday so I started switching between a white spinner bait and the Rat-L-Trap. No takers on the spinner bait but as I did yesterday, slowing down the Rat-L-Trap got me some bites. Lost a hook set, threw it back at the spot and got another bite. Set the hook on this one sent him running on drag. Power and speed assured me that I was bringing in a decent size Peacock. Getting close to the shoreline, I could see it was an easy 4-5# male (male Peacocks at this time have the hump on there heads). Brought it to the shoreline. As I was on a hill top, a good 4-5 feet from the water posed problems. I decided to push him to the side, where I could get closer to the water but he got tangled into the vegetation not two feet from me. Between his tugs and my tugs trying to get loose, the line broke and he continued to be tangled in the weeds with my Rat-L-Trap so graciously stuck on the side of his mouth.

I definitely wanted to get into that 2 feet of water to recover my tough fish (and bait) but this is a spot were I got bitten by a snake (rat snake) last year and saw the day before more than 8 of them swimming at the shore line through those same weeds. For the next few minutes, I tied on another Rat-L-Trap and kept hearing this nice Peacock thrashing, kind of reminding me he was still there but there was nothing I could do. A few minutes had gone by and I see the Peacock get untangled and swim into the deep with my Rat-L-Trap; anyone coming to this lake and catch him please return my lure.