In looking back through my fishing logs I saw a trip a few years ago to Monticello in October where I caught a good many fish including one that weighed over 8 pounds. If I remember correctly the weather was a good bit cooler that it is now. Friday morning I was there bright and early. There was a Ribbit, a swimbait and a Strike King KVD 2.5 tied on my rods. I didn’t even crank the motor. Just trolling motored out into the stumps and stickups. I alternated those baits but did not like the 2.5 because the action was a little aggressive I thought for the 6 foot visibility water so the 2.5 got changed to another small squarebill crankbait that was a gift and had no name on the bait. The only clue to its identity is it has a shiny red and black eye. It quickly caught a fish, albeit a small one.

  I saw no interest on the Ribbit so it stayed on the deck of the boat. The swimbait got a good try in the same places I caught them the other October but no bites. I remember it would be cast out and let sink to the bottom, then slowly retrieved stopping 2 or 3 times to let it sink back to the bottom. For a long time I tried that but no bites. The only bite on the swimbait was on the fall in relatively shallow water. A little one hit it, ran and spit it out. The small crankbait on the other hand was getting action. If you caught one, you needed to comb the area because usually there was another one. Most of the fish were very small but a few were in the 2 3/4 pound range. The fish were really biting around noon and I was fishing close to the bank. Evidently all wildlife gets hungry at the same time because a doe walked out of the woods, watched me cast a few times and then began to feed. She could have cared less and was only 40 yards away. I ended up with 19.