BASS AT THE KNOLLS

You sure got a knack for them whities, and your avatar name is apropos. I tried to get in as shallow as you with my boat and I'm sure glad I had my "Utah Lake prop" on. Got me a nice ding in it.

(Hey TD, I wondered if that was you over there. Conman and I arrived just before Shawn, and I didn't think it would be ideal to motor over and find out fer sure. Not without me knowing if my boat had been sprayed with skunk and didn't want to share my disease or mess up any good mojo you might have goin' on! )

Always a pleasure to fish with you FK! It never ceases to amaze me that we can cast in the same spot as you and not get as many bass just a few feet away! We ended up with enough bass for our taste buds though. We stayed longer after you left - as conditions changed and we did likewise with tactics.

I was disappointed that the water hadn't warmed by when we arrived (58), and just barely got to 63 when the winds kicked up to white caps and we headed home.

Anyway, to tell how we ended up, the last trip to the Knolls I had a cat pole out deeper soaking bait and it was left untouched. But this trip I pulled it in to move the boat and the bait was gone. I chucked another out to sit on the bottom and on the deep side of the boat we kept casting for bass in shallow. I got this strong pull and it didn't feel like a bass. I keep reeling and I pulled in the string from my other pole! I wondered how long he'd been swimming around with the string in his mouth, but we never saw tugs on the cat pole.

Finally, my first kitty of the year!



So, growing weary of sporadic single (male) whites, we rigged other poles for cats and started paying attention to them. Good move. The wind seemed to carry the bait to one area and we kept getting inquiries. Boy, we really had to finesse 'em, and we missed as many as we got (4) in trying to figure out when to set the hook and when to let them run. Fortunately, my son got his first walleye ever! What a nice (20") treat for him!


I thought it would be an unusual day, with this interesting double rainbow off the clouds from the sun.



It was a beautiful day out. Not quite what we expected, but it did teach me first hand that each day of fishing is about figuring the fish out and having more than one plan to find out what works. We've never got us a "grand slime" of 4 species. But we got the bases loaded with a triple threat!