This is always our busiest time of year and the last three weeks have been over the top tough. Almost didn't go fishing today because I have so much to do and to get caught up on at work, but thought I owed myself a break. And with the rest of the country celebrating the holiday, why not me? So we said, "Just do it!"

Stopped at the local quick stop for take out sandwiches and snacks and off we went to the lake 11:30-5:30. A truly perfect day on the lake. Party sunny, light to almost no breeze on and off and about 70 degrees. The most water craft we've maybe ever seen with swimmers, fishermen, SUPs, peddleboats, floats, kayaks etc but fortunately we found our own little space most of the time to ourselves.

Within the first half hour on the trout troll we all lost fish we never saw. Then after a full hour we decided since the bass had started moving two weeks ago we would likely find the largemouths so went plugging. We had steady fun catching and releasing dinks and medium size bass. However, the best fun in several years erupted for all three of us within the same hour.

K. cast to an eroded tree barely showing above water near shore with his favorite top water darter and big bass swallowed it and pulled it under and stayed under. P. yelled, "It's a big one." It took drag and the net was readied. After a short while K. boated a real beauty - the largest we'd boated in quite some time. After measuring and photographing he kissed and released a 16" largemouth (about 3 lbs). We were all still cheering and reminiscing about it when I had a super hit and boated a 13" beauty.

Farther down the same shore P. spotted some nice ones - maybe more 13-16 inchers. He persisted in casting around the big one and said, "Give me another lure" so we kept handing him different lures and different rods with different lures. He was excited and frustrated seeing the fish but getting no bite. I was thinking what profiles had we not tried when I gave him his sixth lure. BAM a fish hit and we all started yelling. P. hollered "That's not the one I was after! This one's even bigger." He played her really well as she hunkered down and then started darting to various downed logs while he prayed aloud she wouldn't get hung under a tree or log. As she approached the third log and poked her head out from under the other side, K. jockeying one of the trade-off rods in one hand, picked up the net in the other, handed it to me and I netted P's fish. We all hooted seeing the size of this beauty. The camera and tape measure was quickly handled and she was set free to catch another day. She was 19 1/4 and 13" girth, (about 4.5 lbs). What a great fish!

We rode that high for the next three hours as we plugged all over the lake. We had a few more spurts of fast activity with some long lulls. In the end, I boated 1 sunfish, 26 bass, and the last fish of the day - a fat rainbow.
K. boated 15 bass with the second largest fish of the day. And P. boated 15 as well and the trophy fish. A real team effort today and 58 fish for the memory book.

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