Fished Rufus with a couple of buddies on the 20th and 21st. The fishing wasn't very fast-paced, but the fish were huge! We fished exclusively at the upper most pens. We spent time trolling the flats outside of the pens, but caught all of our fish tied up inside of the pens. We spent the first half of the day Sunday using artificials to no avail, hoping that we'd be releasing a lot of fish before keeping some for the smoker. We finally switched to bait and caught 3 fish, the biggest being 8.5 pounds which was my new personal best by a pound. Two of the fish were caught on perch colored streamers tipped with a worm, fished behind a wigglefin action disk. One was caught on white powerbait. On Monday we only had the morning to fish so we went right to the bait. We worked hard but finally caught our 6 fish limit, including another 8.5 pounder, and I finally hauled in the double digit trip I've been looking for, the 13.5 pounder pictured above! That day the fish were caught on a jig tipped with powerbait, a worm on a bare hook, a berkley power minnow, and a GULP leech. If we would've had the kitchen sink, we would've tried it! I ranked the trip a 4 because the were so few and far between, but the scenery, size of the fish, and good company definitely made for an awesome trip!

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