I decided to try to trap some crawdads down by Magnussen Park tonight. So just for the hell of it, as long as I was out there and had 45 minutes of daylight to play with, I boated around (rubber raft range in the wind, I wasn't going to get too far down the shore), and eventually pitched out some nightcrawlers on a drop shot.

Tonight I think I officially graduated from rank amateur to novice fisherman. I was hoping to pull up some perch, or little rock bass, or whatever might be swimming around out past the weed line which had twice cost me a 1 ounce weight last time I was in the area. But turns out the dreadnought in the picture was what was swimming around down there! First cast, I kid you not.

First cast was actually going to go on as long as I wanted, as the wind was drifting me fast enough that I wasn't reeling, just bumping along the bottom.

But needless to say, 2 hours later I'm still excited. I've never caught a fish in a lake over 10.5 inches prior to tonight, and that smallmouth was a solid 16 inches. I was afraid I'd have to eat him, as I had him out of the water a while taking pictures and carrying on. But I patted him on the head and told him how awesome he was and held him upright in the water, and just as I was considering mouth to mouth resuscitation he finally decided to wake up and off he swam.

My plan was to go in the same place early tomorrow morning and drag the senko around. Well, guess what? My plan just got reinforced by 10x haha.

I know for some of you out there, catching a 16 inch smallmouth is ... a Tuesday. Or just any random Friday. Well, for me, first sure identified smallmouth ever, and biggest lake fish ever by 5.5 inches, it was a five star 1 hour of fishing! I got 3 other bites, but just the one hookup. Now that I think about it, probably by anyone's standards, 4 solid bites and landing a monster smallmouth in an hour would be a 5 star outing!

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