Post by lund2 on Apr 3, 2018 21:45:07 GMT -5
3/30 +3/31 BW
Headed up to the lake Thursday evening after taking Friday off for the weekend. Meeting Lund1 up at the lake who just earlier that day had gone out and caught a beautiful tank of bait. 10-15 baits that were 8-12” and half a dozen 13-15”ers. As he pulled the trolling motor up to putter out of the back of his bait hole he was greeted by nothing but a “click” when he turned the key to crank the big motor. After messing with battery connections for quite some time he went back to the trolling motor. Which wasn’t doing much due to the 20mph winds blowing Thursday. As he struggled down the BW with a dying battery he was ignored by the first two boats that he attempted to waive over in distress. Finally a nice family that seemed new to boating in generally stopped an helped tow him for about 40min back to our creek before he stopped and let the trolling motor take back over now that he was out of the wind.
Since Lund1 and Lund2 are not as handy as Yam and Bentrod, we called our boat guy to take a look at the engine. He lifted the engine lid off, too one look at a connection, said, “ahhhh”, screwed a bolt ¾ of a turn, and cranked the engine up……..good as new……
Friday Morning 3/30:
AT: it 60 degrees at 7am on Friday morning. Rising to 75 partly cloudy
WT: 46-49ish
Technique: 6 rods. 3 bankside no weight boards, two channel boards 1 weighted, one free line. One float out the back.
Started pullin by about 645am and we boated two fish that slammed baits in the first 5 min. fished that spot for a while longer. Missed 3 or 4 fish, mostly bc the fish hit so hard and fast you couldn’t put your beer down fast enough. And ended up picking up one more in that creek. All 3 fish were 28-29”.
At about 1045 we decided to throw for some bait in the back of that creek. Went up real shallow and threw in about 2FOW and came up with my PB throw. 35 baits 12-15”. Tried to snap a pic but it didn’t do justice. That was almost better than any of the fish we had caught that morning.
Went in for some lunch and bc it started blowing around noon. Ate some food and both layed down for an hour nap or so. Until we both read Yam and BentRod’s post from the evening previous, in the wind. We both got up and back on the boat and battled the wind till 645pm or so. Picked up 3 more good fish all 29-30” that evening.
6 fish on the day and a handful more missed, not a bad day. No particular pattern to how the fish hit, some were bank, some were channel on a weight.
Lund1 has fish photos from that day in his phone.
Saturday 3/31:
AT: 38 rising to 60 partly cloudy
WT: 48-50
Technique: 5 free lined boards, 3 bankside, 2 channel and one float out the back.
Bait: biggest shad we could find. This is about the smallest bait we used:
Lund1 decided to sleep in a bit then head back to Raleigh early, so I called a buddy who I knew was up for the Easter weekend, sent him a picture of the bait I had and he was at my house by 6am sharp on Saturday. We were at our spot by 630am sharp and had a healthy 29” fish in the boat within the first 5 min.
on the way back out of the creek on the opposite bank we had two of our largest 15” baits on a bankside board start to get harassed and chased. The first seemed about the same caliber fish we had been catching and seemed to be having a bit of a hard time stomaching and full grown Mongo. The second fish did not have that issue. A few missed attempts at the bait showed how big he was, and then he made contact. Fought him for a good 4-5 min. he made a few good runs as he neared the boat got worked him into the net.
He was 36” and a healthy 20lbs on the bogas. Nice Citation.
Thinking back to Yam and BentRod’s report, I looked and my buddy and said, let’s get out of here…
Moved creeks and setup all the way in the back of this one and started to pull out. Got our spread out and pulled for about 100 yards around a shallow point and another bankside board with a 14” shad got slammed. My buddy grabbed the rod and crossed the fishes eyes well for a nonfisherman. Faught that fish for what felt like 10 min. he was taking huge runs everytime he saw the boat and I kept backing off the drag, bc I wasn’t sure how well he was hooked. Finally got him to the boat and as I netted him another bankside board got slammed and I passed the net to my buddy and told him to get his fish out of it and grabbed the rod and had another fish on. This fish came in relatively easy, until it got boatside. Realized it was another really good fish. he took a few runs, but I managed to muscle him to the boat kinda quick and my buddy assisted my netting him with one hand while holding his fish in the other hand.
First fish turned out to be 37” on the dot and just shy of 20lbs and the second one was 39” and just barely 23lbs (my new Personal Best). Both fish revived and swam away healthy
During those two back to back fights, the boat did about three 360 degree turns. So after taking 25 min to untangle the entire boat I looked at my buddy and said, “ it doesn’t get any better than that. Lets get out of here”. And we went back to the house cleaned the boat well and I headed back to Raleigh to watch the final four and eat Easter lunch with the family on Sunday.
Definitely my best day on SML so far. 3 Citations and one 29” fish before Noon, and my new Personal best at 39” and 23lbs.
Headed up to the lake Thursday evening after taking Friday off for the weekend. Meeting Lund1 up at the lake who just earlier that day had gone out and caught a beautiful tank of bait. 10-15 baits that were 8-12” and half a dozen 13-15”ers. As he pulled the trolling motor up to putter out of the back of his bait hole he was greeted by nothing but a “click” when he turned the key to crank the big motor. After messing with battery connections for quite some time he went back to the trolling motor. Which wasn’t doing much due to the 20mph winds blowing Thursday. As he struggled down the BW with a dying battery he was ignored by the first two boats that he attempted to waive over in distress. Finally a nice family that seemed new to boating in generally stopped an helped tow him for about 40min back to our creek before he stopped and let the trolling motor take back over now that he was out of the wind.
Since Lund1 and Lund2 are not as handy as Yam and Bentrod, we called our boat guy to take a look at the engine. He lifted the engine lid off, too one look at a connection, said, “ahhhh”, screwed a bolt ¾ of a turn, and cranked the engine up……..good as new……
Friday Morning 3/30:
AT: it 60 degrees at 7am on Friday morning. Rising to 75 partly cloudy
WT: 46-49ish
Technique: 6 rods. 3 bankside no weight boards, two channel boards 1 weighted, one free line. One float out the back.
Started pullin by about 645am and we boated two fish that slammed baits in the first 5 min. fished that spot for a while longer. Missed 3 or 4 fish, mostly bc the fish hit so hard and fast you couldn’t put your beer down fast enough. And ended up picking up one more in that creek. All 3 fish were 28-29”.
At about 1045 we decided to throw for some bait in the back of that creek. Went up real shallow and threw in about 2FOW and came up with my PB throw. 35 baits 12-15”. Tried to snap a pic but it didn’t do justice. That was almost better than any of the fish we had caught that morning.
Went in for some lunch and bc it started blowing around noon. Ate some food and both layed down for an hour nap or so. Until we both read Yam and BentRod’s post from the evening previous, in the wind. We both got up and back on the boat and battled the wind till 645pm or so. Picked up 3 more good fish all 29-30” that evening.
6 fish on the day and a handful more missed, not a bad day. No particular pattern to how the fish hit, some were bank, some were channel on a weight.
Lund1 has fish photos from that day in his phone.
Saturday 3/31:
AT: 38 rising to 60 partly cloudy
WT: 48-50
Technique: 5 free lined boards, 3 bankside, 2 channel and one float out the back.
Bait: biggest shad we could find. This is about the smallest bait we used:
Lund1 decided to sleep in a bit then head back to Raleigh early, so I called a buddy who I knew was up for the Easter weekend, sent him a picture of the bait I had and he was at my house by 6am sharp on Saturday. We were at our spot by 630am sharp and had a healthy 29” fish in the boat within the first 5 min.
on the way back out of the creek on the opposite bank we had two of our largest 15” baits on a bankside board start to get harassed and chased. The first seemed about the same caliber fish we had been catching and seemed to be having a bit of a hard time stomaching and full grown Mongo. The second fish did not have that issue. A few missed attempts at the bait showed how big he was, and then he made contact. Fought him for a good 4-5 min. he made a few good runs as he neared the boat got worked him into the net.
He was 36” and a healthy 20lbs on the bogas. Nice Citation.
Thinking back to Yam and BentRod’s report, I looked and my buddy and said, let’s get out of here…
Moved creeks and setup all the way in the back of this one and started to pull out. Got our spread out and pulled for about 100 yards around a shallow point and another bankside board with a 14” shad got slammed. My buddy grabbed the rod and crossed the fishes eyes well for a nonfisherman. Faught that fish for what felt like 10 min. he was taking huge runs everytime he saw the boat and I kept backing off the drag, bc I wasn’t sure how well he was hooked. Finally got him to the boat and as I netted him another bankside board got slammed and I passed the net to my buddy and told him to get his fish out of it and grabbed the rod and had another fish on. This fish came in relatively easy, until it got boatside. Realized it was another really good fish. he took a few runs, but I managed to muscle him to the boat kinda quick and my buddy assisted my netting him with one hand while holding his fish in the other hand.
First fish turned out to be 37” on the dot and just shy of 20lbs and the second one was 39” and just barely 23lbs (my new Personal Best). Both fish revived and swam away healthy
During those two back to back fights, the boat did about three 360 degree turns. So after taking 25 min to untangle the entire boat I looked at my buddy and said, “ it doesn’t get any better than that. Lets get out of here”. And we went back to the house cleaned the boat well and I headed back to Raleigh to watch the final four and eat Easter lunch with the family on Sunday.
Definitely my best day on SML so far. 3 Citations and one 29” fish before Noon, and my new Personal best at 39” and 23lbs.