Right after work yesterday, I headed to Buck Lake for the 1st time in a couple of years. The weather was great with just a little breeze. The last time I was here I caught a couple of trout but was mostly after largemouth bass and wasn't disappointed, catching a nice one just shy of 12" and another 18". This time, after an hour of hitting the shore with various Rapalas, I had nothing. Not a bite and not even a swirl of the surface waters, not even where I'd released that 18" monster the last time.

As I occasionally do in such situations, I switched over to trolling for trout, to get a few catches under the belt. But after about an hour of that using a black Wooly Bugger/Smile Blade combination and getting only a couple of back to back nibbles, I ditched this plan.

I spent another half hour hitting the rest of the shoreline with Rapalas for bass, but nothing.

There were 2-3 lines out at the launch as I returned, and as I was packing up, a young girl (10 yo?) noticed her dad's line start to twitch and was all on it! She got that trout right up to the shore, but it proved to be the victor in this test. The excitement juiced everyone and in no time the line was back out hoping for another strike. I got to meet a couple nice guys at the launch, and a few kids, which only added to the nice time on the water, but there being no fish caught, I have to give this a '1'.