A learning Experience

[WIGuide]

Last Friday, I had the whole day off work instead of the usual half day, so I headed out to do some prefishing for a tournament I've got coming up. My offshore game quite honestly a little weak, so I've been trying to work on that as well. I had a good opportunity to do both, so I took advantage. The weather was pretty much bipolar and couldn't decide what it wanted to do. One minute it was so hot I wanted to take my shirt off, 5 minutes later I was ready to dig for a sweatshirt, a few minutes later I was pulling out the rain gear. It kept cycling through that way for quite a while before it finally just got kind of chilly and windy. There was a decent square bill bite going on up by the bank but after catching a few, I would do my best to fight the urge to have a blast and move back out deeper. I'd puts for a while and then go back shallow and catch a few. I lost a few good fish out on some humps and was starting to get a little discouraged. My luck finally turned around a little when I was pulling a football head across a stump covered hump. There wasn't much as far as a hit, but it just felt different, so I let her have it and felt that amazing feeling as the rod loads up, but what your hooked into doesn't move much. You know you have a good one on and the anticipation builds while you battle and try to get a the first glimpse. It ended up being an 18 3/4" largemouth which looked like a straight up monster after doing a considerable amount of dink dropping!

After being on that high, and riding it for a while, it took a little dip when I lost another solid fish boat-side that would have been close to 18". Unfortunately the down slide didn't stop there. About a half hour later, I found out I did some damage my squarebill rod earlier when it got caught under my tie down cleat. I though I got lucky because it kind of popped out, I didn't hear a crack, and it wasn't visibly damaged. Unfortunately the next hook set I had with it very neatly snapped in two between the first eye and the reel. The sad thing was it was on a little 12 incher, so I couldn't even have the story that I hooked into one so big it snapped my rod! 

By the end of the 6 1/2 hours of fishing, the total count was 18 largemouth and 2 walleyes. It was challenging to keep going on the off shore stuff despite knowing the quality of fish that live out there. Had I ground it out with the squarebill, there's no doubt I could have had anywhere between a 30-60 fish outing, but I wouldn't have been working to get better.It definitely was a roller coaster of an outing, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat...as long as I could go without breaking anything! Those are going to be the 4 most expensive walleye fillets I've ever eaten lol. 

[fishinfiend]

nice one!