I was at the private hole early this morning. I have not seen the boat there for a month and a lot can happen. So I went early to get the boat ready. It was muddy so I had to carry all my equipment, including a battery, down the muddy ramp. My anchor was sitting in the middle of the boat without a rope. The landing net was out of the boat about 40 yards down the bank. Maybe a strong wind, but the anchor rope had been cut. Maybe someone needed it more than I did. A Rapala XRD10 was the first bait out of the box. It’s a deep suspending jerk bait. I’ve read a lot about fishing jerk baits and everyone stresses slow and pause. Some people swear they pause for a minute. Not me, but I didn’t catch one on it either. Had a nip or two but no fish caught.  Hal and Richard went Friday and caught 8, many of those on a drop shot.  I tried that too but no bites. Tried a Carolina rig, DT-10, and shaky head with no luck. Hal told me that the fish bit better from 11:00 to 1:00 and sure enough at 11:10 the first fish came into the boat.  It did not have the bait in its mouth but just came too close to the Rapala DTF7 I had put on. Again I had read somewhere that a flat sided crank bait was good in cold situations.  The “F” stands for flat.

You can see in the first photo how the fish was hooked. The second one shows how pretty the fish are out of the clean clear water. Ten minutes later another fish came in the boat. After being scared of a skunk, things were looking up.  Then disaster struck.  The DTF7 got hung on something and I could not get it loose. It was hung on a sack that someone sunk a couple of years ago that has captured 4 or 5 of my baits. The bag has a house block or something just as heavy in it that I can not pick up with my bait rescue pole. The DTF7 was lost.  Out of the box came a small Bomber Fat Free Shad that dives to about 8 feet. It finally caught the third fish about 1:00. I fished until 2:00 but could not raise another bite. The fish were textbook, on the sunny side of the hole that had the wind blowing toward it. Three bass total, all between 2 1/2 and 2 – 13.