I had to take my youngest son back to the surgeon for a follow-up visit and to schedule his next surgical procedure for this coming Monday. His appointment was at 8:00 a.m. this morning in Ephrata, Pa.
So, last night, Josh and I made plans to meet at the ramp after my son's appointment.
I had all my gear packed and ready to go at home in the F-150. I had even made a nice ham and cheese sammie for us to share while on the water. All this was in the truck and waiting for me when I got home. The change over from the car to truck took place and I was on the road north to meet up with Josh around 9:00 a.m.
There was one problem, when I called Josh at 8:45 a.m., he had absolutely NO fish in the boat. Say what!? We gotta change that. And by the time I arrived at the ramp around 10:00 a.m., he still had "nada." This didn't sound good at all. We declared war on the bass!
We headed north to a spot where we knew the water was moving well and there were some grass islands. The first spot yielded no fish, but the second grass bed gave us a little bass that hit my spinnerbait. Although it hit well, we failed to land her.
We entered a little deeper water and we threw some tubes and I hooked into another bass. Guess what? Yep! She came unbutton, too, just behind the boat in heavy current. Hmmmmm... two fish, two different lures, and no fish in the boat! What's up with that?
We floated an area that Josh had a lot of confidence in and he nailed a beautiful 14" smallie on a green pumpkin(?) tube. He hit another fish shortly after which wiped the skunk odor clean from the boat completely... Thank goodness.
Josh just happened to get hung up with his tube on one of the many ledges that held fish in this area and I got a hard "Thunk!" The fight was one and we brought to hand a beautiful 17.75" smallie with nice weight to her.
Look what that smallie did to my lure!
We ran back up river to float this area again and once again Josh got hung up... Hmmmm. I tossed my Black Neon tube out and got another smack... but she failed to hook up. Dang! Am I seeing a pattern here? Josh gets hung up, I cast, and we get a smallie hit.
I reeled the tube back to the boat and gave it another good long distance cast. Well, another bass hit my tube and came undone. Folks, I had 5 bass hit and come unbuttoned today. I even sharpened my hooks really well and replaced a tube head to see if it would make a difference and it didn't.
It wasn't long after that we heard thunder to the west and the clouds were thickening. We decided to run to another spot because it appeared that there was rain down by the ramp. We waited for about 30 minutes until the skies cleared a bit... T-storms surrounding us... and we made a mad dash for the ramp. Thank goodness we arrived w/o getting drenched or struck by a bolt of lightning... That would have just about made our day!
Between the two of us, we only landed 3 bass and had 9 other hits!! It was extremely hot and humid outside today. The water temp was 82 degrees. Not bad for this time of year. It's the warmest I've seen it all summer which is hard to believe.
We had variable cloud cover and even had a period of light drizzle from a rogue dark cloud overhead. It was strange since the sun was shining all around us. I think I may have mentioned to Josh early that they were calling for t-storms and he said they were suppose to be scattered. I told him for me scattered usually means right overhead... and then we had the drizzle. Now that was funny!
dadTB
