6-27-2016

Been fishing probably 2-5 times this year so far (All within the last two weeks). Nothing too serious. A lot of the time I have my wife and daughter with me. So far I've caught 3 catfish and a large mouth on Holloway Reservoir and 1 catfish and 4 small mouth at Griswold Park. Nothing too outrageous all around 12-15 inches so far. And nothing of decent weight.

Today I was driving on Mt. Morris road and as I drove by the public fishing area I seen some cat tails on a peninsula of land about a half mile out. Figured with the 95 degree heat there would be a good chance that they were bedded up anywhere they could get to. A lot of times people don't wade out into the water so they're stuck fishing the same spots around a good area of cover. They never really get dead in front or directly into the weeds, pads, or cat tails. So I pulled over and grabbed my GX2 with the Shakespeare reel. 50 lb braid on that beast. Mostly use it for punching pads and top water frogging. So I grab my favorite tray of lures out of my tackle and toss the buck tail in there as well. I start walking through the woods and there's a few trails because it's frequently fished. Finally reached where the trails ended and I pushed through the brush until I hit shoreline. To my surprise it was very hard sand like a beach and the clarity was amazing. Waded out about 50 yards on the shore and around 20 feet away from the shoreline. Finally reached the cat tails I wanted to test. Threw on a lip-less crank-bait with a crawdad pattern. Tossed that around 10 times and decided to switch to the buck tail for some reason. First cast went way off course because of the weight difference between the crank-bait and the heavy buck tail. Next cast is dead nuts in front of the cat tail within inches of them. Start reeling with a twitch twitch pause pattern and boom got a major hit. I thought I had hooked a pike but in that shallow of water and where I was it just didn't make sense. Finally get it reeled in and it's a beast of a large-mouth. At least 4 pounds. May not seem like a big deal to an experienced angler but you just don't see bass that big in Holloway anymore. I was really surprised at how sharp the teeth were. Which typically means the fish is feeding mainly on smaller fish and not crawdads or other hard prey. Vibrant coloration told me this fish spent most of it's time pushed up into cover and out of open water. I guess now I found my new spot. I have a 18 Foot Sylvan open bow but I don't think I'll be taking it out there to fish. I'll probably buy a kayak since my buddy just got one and we can do some drifting in and around the different cover around that park of the reservoir.