PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

If you hike to Hanson/Chitwood or Smelling/Julia, you will park at the gate on ... Scotty Road I think it's called. DO NOT park in the turn around where the 8 No Parking signs are. Park on the side of the road just before that. We ran into the local property owner on the hike. He aggressively patrols that turn around. I can hear it now ... oh this, and oh that .... you're in his world out there. If you want to avoid problems, dont park in front of the no parking signs.

Now on to the report.

On the way back down from Hanson we stopped at Chitwood We didn't feel there was time to inflate the raft, and we were tired anyway, so we just fished from shore. Bobber and worm for the force of nature, and I was throwing the gold castmaster, and then tried otherthings. We caught fish on both bobber/worm and on the gold castmaster.

Observations - there was clearly not as many fish in Chitwood, although we only fished the corner where there was access. Maybe the bite would have been stronger out on the water. But, the fish were definitely bigger. We did not release any fish from this lake - the whopper and the 2 good sized ones were the only landed. But MAN ... you should have seen the leviathan that followed my castmaster up to the shore. It was substantially bigger than the 13 incher in the pic. I would guess 16-17 inches. But I could not entice it to bite.

Again, gorgeous fish, didn't get rained on, but didn't watch time closely enough and ended up walking back to the car in the dakr.

All in all, an amazing day, I'm trashed, the force of nature seems better off than myself now, and if I can heal enough overnight I may try to hit Smelling / Julia tomorrow. I have a feeling however that my feet + my quads + my neck are not going to tolerate another 8-10 mile hike on one day's rest. Oh well.

Fish in this pic were MUCH more goregous when caught.

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