Leesville 11/2... a new best!

[piper]

Greetings,

The wife gave me a few hours this evening...who am I to turn that down..   Water temps fluctuated around 62-63...air temps about 70 minus the 100 mph wind gusts   ...

Bait extremely hard to come by..found some small school shallow and netted a whopping 5 peanuts.  Got frustrated so I decided to use what I had...

Marked fish all over...found some decent schools of possible stripes but no takers... finally drifted into deeper water and BAM....fish on

Caught 1...my personal best of 34" and about 18lbs.  I use lighter tackle so she took me almost 10 minutes...What a BLAST!    Will post pics tom.

[Gator]

Congrats!

[dogsbestfriend]

nice, did ya weigh that fish or guess the weight ?

[piper]

[mwardncsu]

Nice job and great looking fish - a personal best is always a good day. And light tackle does make the fight a blast.

I need some new scales though - got a 34.25" early on Sat morning that went 13-13.5 lbs on my Bogas. Typically expect an 18 lb fish to be 36"-38" on SML at least.

[BentRod]

Nice fish! I've caught 33.5" 18lbers on SML in spring time. Could be close..it looks thicker than SML fish do right now.

[mwardncsu]

True - several of the fish I caught this weekend looked like they were trying to be Kate Moss wanna-be's.

[piper]

I didnt have my scales so pure guesstimate based on length and girth. You guys are prob. more accurate than me..been doin this a lot longer than I have...

[catsnstripers]

Are Fish are skinny. I don't know why we have plenty of bait. Even the new baitFish.. your scales are probably right spikeward, that's the sad part.

[CorneliaGale]

All the fish seems to be long and skinny, not like the old days when they were pot gutted and looked deformed. With all the bait seems like they should be fat and growing good. Guess they haven't gotten over the parasite well enough to really gain weight yet.