I was back fishing at the Private Hole at 12:05 this afternoon. Recency bias, doing again what worked last time, had me going clockwise around the hole rather than counter clockwise as I usually start.  I have started to try different baits for a short while and if there are no results quickly change to something else. A 5-XD, a shaky head, a red eye shad were tried but nothing. The DT-6 caught one on its first cast, albeit a small one. It caught another after a few minutes but then hit a dry spell that lasted halfway around the hole. The other baits came out but couldn’t change things. Not even one bite. The 5-XD came out at the spot where I usually start and it started going on. I started out deep and caught one on the first cast. Another on the second, and on the third I could see two fish trying to take the bait out of the mouth of the one that was hooked. NOW !  The fish were not any tight eyes either. I was scared of getting hung on a log that is deep in that spot but the fish were so close to it I just hoped I would be lucky and not get hung up. The fish kept biting and finally I found the log. Of course when the fish are biting like that, I took no chances and set the hook when I felt something. Set it so hard I squeaked the drag. I eased over to the spot and since it was 14 feet deep I used my lure retriever on the rope. After working with it, the bait finally came loose and I had a tangle of rope and fluorocarbon line.  I eased off the spot to get back in action. This is a photo of the retriever.

The neat part about it is you can insert the line into those loops on the top without taking anything loose . It saved the 5-XD twice today. When I returned to the action it had subsided somewhat. I decided to go at it from a different direction.  Sometimes that works to get things cranked off again. The bass in the Private Hole move around a lot so when I came at the spot from a different direction I covered  some new water too.  It worked and I started catching them again. Finally they really did quit in the deep, or went somewhere else, so I moved to the shallow. I threw the red eye shad into some shallow water and started out when I got what I thought was a bite. I set the hook and had it coming but it was feeling more and more like a stick. A  3 1/4 pounder jumped right at the boat  to dispel the stick idea. On the way back around the hole I threw a DT-6 by a log sticking up in 20+ feet of water and got a bite. When  set the hook the line quickly broke. Luckily the DT-6 floated up and was recovered. After tying it back on, I tried the log again and to my surprise got another bite. It ran toward the boat so fast it was hard for me to keep up but I was able to, and good thing, 5 pounds even. After trying the good spot again and catching nothing I called it a day at 5:00. The total was 21 bass with a 3-4, a 4-7, a 4-0, a 4-3 and that FOD 5-0.  No water Mexicans today but I was sharing the hole with a big gator. I was lucky that I went the wrong way because the fish would have probably not been at the good spot when I was.