Woo, haven't been out in quite some time. Time for fishing this year has been severely lacking.

Spotted the Mean Green at the launch. Thought maybe I'll head up north and see if I can see him up there. As I'm boating out, you could see the marine layer coming in from the NNE. It looked like the north half of the lake would be cover with this layer, so I stopped and started fishing mid lake instead. The haze was very ominous.

First cast at about 8:30AM. Felt non-stop ticks from perch, bluegills and fingerling bass. Lost a couple of soft plastics, so I stopped setting the hooks on those buggers. Rotating through my setups, I went back to old faithful after about 30 mins. 2 casts in and I get a decent strike. Not big by any means, but biggest so far. Just a little ~14-15" LMB. Very skinny.

Then get a couple dink SMB on the same lure. One of them was almost literally on the bank. There couldn't have been more than a few inches of water. As soon as the lure hit the water, it was swimming away with it.

As I'm reeling in my swimbait, all of a sudden, a bird splashed down about 10' from the boat. It's some type of hawk I guess. Scared the crap out of me, lol. At first, I thought it was attacking a fish, but soon I realize, I think it tried to get my lure. My lure was pretty much right where it struck. Or maybe a fish was following my lure and it tried to attack the fish. The bird flys around and lands in a tree close to me. It's perched there looking at me. I have my lure reeled in with rod in hand. I take my phone and take a picture of the bird. As soon as I put down the phone, the bird takes off and flys towards me! It turns and heads towards my lure dangling at the end of the rod. I had to yell at the bugger and it turns away and perch a bit farther down.

By now, the marine layer has burned off and it's sunny throughout the entire lake. I start heading up north. I stop off at a honey hole and pounded it good. Must have caught 7-8 at that area. Only 3 were decent size. The rests were under 12". These all attacked the DS. Tried throwing several different setups in the area, but no bites on them. When I set the hook on the good one, I knew it had to be a pretty nice one. It wouldn't come up. It just stayed down. Felt like a nice LMB at first. It dug down and stayed down. Only a headshake here and there. Eventually I got color and it went a bit bonkers when it got near the surface. Everything held and scooped it into the net. Looked a lot bigger in the water. Probably bc I haven't seen a nice fish in so long! LOL. 3.48#. I'll take it. The other 2 decent ones were just barely over 2#.

Only fished for a little over 3 hours today. It was getting a bit hot by 11:45 and a lot more boat traffic. Good time to head in.