Launched at 9:00AM, after some boat/trailer shenanigans around a bank fisherman who planted his chair on the side of the small unimproved ramp, and left his car blocking over 1/2 of what little ramp is available. The parking area is basically non-existent, so this was not appreciated. To further irritate me the knuckle-head never bothered to even look up and acknowledge we were even there.

Since we were leaving our vehicle/trailer unattended, I opted not to even talk to him about it. Anyhow, it was a beautiful sunny morning with lots of geese, ospreys and eagles in the area--but no bass. We tossed everything from plastic worms to hefty swimbaits and rats. We hit the North end of the lake for the first 1 1/2 hrs, then the wind picked up and I let it drift us to the South end of the lake. We had noted the two big floating mats that I mentioned last year jammed up against the shore to the North of the ramp area but didn't pay them much attention.

After it had been blowing awhile I mentioned to my son that it appeared one of the mats was moving toward the boat launch area. Pretty soon it became obvious that the mat was moving at a good clip, and then the 2nd one started to move. We'd only been out a couple of hours, but I told Ben, "We're out of here!"

We were able to get around the first mat and got the boat on the trailer. In the 10 minutes it took us to get loaded up the area in front of the launch was blocked by the two mats--each of which are probably 1/2 acre or so in size and they fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. Don't know if we would have been able to jam our way between the two or not had we gotten caught, but kind of doubt it with the brisk wind working against us.

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