By Rich Miller
Well, we have been waiting on it all year and when summer time got here, man she has made her presence known. I don’t remember it ever being this hot this early. This year though has been crazy hot for this early in June. Heat or no heat, though, the summertime activities that we usually partake in will carry on anyway.
Last week, I finally had the opportunity to fish a bass tournament with my dad. In years past we have fished a small team trail on our local lake every Thursday night. So far this year, I haven’t had the opportunity to fish with him. The weather was supposed to be good; the lake level was perfect for our kind of fishing.
The tournament started at 6pm and ran to 10pm. At 6pm we were on our way to one of our best spots with high hopes because we hadn’t fished it yet this year. When we pulled in, excitement was running high as we were anticipating a big catch. About 10 minutes into it, my dad set the hook on a fish and quickly slung him into the boat. He wasn’t what we were looking for, but he was a keeper.
For the next 15 minutes it was pretty slow until I saw my line jump as my bait came past a log in the water. When I set the hook, I immediately knew that this was one that we were after! In no time the fish was in the net and he was a solid four pounds. For the next hour, our bites were sparse but the fish we caught were quality fish. We had five fish in the live well and that is all that we can weigh in, but we needed to cull a couple to have a good chance of winning the tournament.
On the way back down the bank, my dad flipped under a tree where he had missed a fish on the way up; and when he set the hook, the water went flying. I quickly grabbed the net and we landed him in what seemed like just a few seconds. That fish was close to five pounds and we culled a small 12-inch fish with him. It was pretty slow for the next 15 minutes or so and we started hearing thunder get closer by the second.
As we were heading out of the cove, deciding what we were going to do next, there was a little twig sticking up in front of the boat and I told my dad to throw at it before we got too close. When he pitched his bait up there we both watched his line start moving off before it hit the bottom. That turned out to be a three-pound fish that culled another smaller fish. Lightning was steadily getting worse, and with that last fish in the boat we decided to count our blessings and head back to the ramp while we still had time.
On the way back, there were black clouds all around us and the wind was picking up, too. As we arrived at the ramp and got the boat out, I looked at my watch and it was only 8:30; we still had another hour and a half to fish if it weren’t for the storm.
Some of the guys didn’t come in till 10:00 on the nose and I was amazed that they sat out there in all of the lightning. When we weighed in, we didn’t have as big a catch as we had previously thought, but we did have right at sixteen pounds. The closest weight to was thirteen pounds. We ended up winning it but didn’t get big fish. Another guy had a fish a little over five pounds and beat us by just a few ounces. It was a great afternoon of fishing for sure even with the storm that came through. We had a blast and to win the tournament also just top the cake of a great afternoon of fishing.
