In my experience catching a fish on the first cast has lead to bad luck. Catching one on the first cast leads to an initial blast of optimism but I can’t tell you how many times that might be the only fish you catch or one of the few. This morning I arrived at the private hole at 9:05 due to rules letting turkey hunters have the daybreak hours, a good rule I think. When I crossed the levee all the cows were standing up eating, a good sign that the fish were probably eating too. When I arrived, Cruising in the water just behind the boat were 5 bass between 2 and 3 pounds. The water has risen since I last put the boat on the rack so some water had come through the drain hole. I winched the boat higher on the rack and had to wait for the water to drain. The fish were still behind the boat. Not wanting to catch one on the first cast, I walked down the bank a short way and cast the Cripple Killer top water bait out into the open water. When I put my best impression of Mickey working a crazy shad on the Cripple Killer, one came up from the deep, smacked it, and got caught on the first cast. The first cast Hoo Doo was on. After I got the boat into the water and started fishing, the CK got the call and responded by catching fish all around the hole. Here is one it caught with a growth of some sort on the underside of it’s mouth.

After about an hour the top water bite started to subside. One fish, the 4 – 0 FOD, just came up and hit it like a bream. I didn’t set the hook until I saw it was a lot larger than any bream. Another waited until I completely stopped the bait when I was distracted by a bird ( I was bird watching too) before it smashed the bait. I changed to a shaky head with a Zoom trick worm and caught a few more. Even that bite slowed. The bites were hard to detect but even when detected the fish were not eating the bait. The worm would be pulled in half on the hook set. After two had been pulled in two, and suspecting a grinner, I let the next one have it for more time. When I set the hook on that one there was a fish on but it was a bass. The fish was hooked on the outside of its mouth but it had one of my trick worms it its gullet. Things had slowed to  trickle by 4:30 so I quit, all the time suspecting that around dark the bite would rapidly pick up. I ended up with 27 bass and a crappie, caught on a DT-6. The first cast syndrome didn’t work today thank goodness.