Turned out to be an absolutely beautiful morning with light winds and realtively moderate temp for this time of year. I believe the troops arrived around 6:30 or so and the staff on land started calling in boat by boat to come in and pick up their crew. Mike Glover and the other organizers did a great job with organizing this thing and everthing went like clockwork.
We marked some fish on a hump in about 80’ and the plan was to use the trolling motor and hover around. That was until I went to lower it down an “snap!”…the mechanical lock that holds the motor down broke, so when I turned it on it would raise out of the water. So I grab the anchor and it wraped up in some crazy kind of way from a friend that helped me get ready. I’m sure there was some easy way to undo it, but I didn’t know it, so I’m trying to drop the anchor while at the same time undoing the knots in the line. I get so focused on working on the knots and then see that I left the troliing motor down and the line got wrapped around it a few times, so I pull up the motor and undo that. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head, but I could just feel their eyes rolling. Mind you, this is all in the first 15 minutes of being on the water. LOL
Anyway, we finally got set up and wound up just staying there. It was just a slow pick as fish would come on through. The baits weren’t living very long, so most of the ones we got seem to come when we had just put fresh baits down shortly before they passed through. Even when the screen looked like this, we might pick one up…or might not.
So we just wound up staying there and waiting them out. Got #10 about 10:00 or so. I didn’t get to stay till the very end, but unless someone pulled out a bigger one after I left, I believe the biggest was only 6+ lbs. But most got to catch some fish and they all seemed to have a great time.
Great job Tim. Sounds like someone “linked” or “chained” your anchor rope. It is the absolute best way to store rope. All those “knots” come loose if u pull a certain way. Kinda like a Chinese finger trap, the more force u use the slower u get anywhere.
It was a great day! Me and my 2 guys got our limit by 8:30ish. Our fish were in 70 feet and all were caught within 15 feet of the bottom. Interestingly, we got 14 in the first 45 minutes of fishing. It took us another 45 to boat the last one even though our screen continued to look like Tim’s. The guys had a ball, and one of them took 3rd to win a nice striper combo.1st-3rd was 6.14, 6.13, and 6.12 We rode around visiting others and taking pics after we limited:sunglasses:
My hands were like sandpaper from all the fish cleaning! We must have filleted 220+ fish. I lost count at around 80 I did myself:sunglasses: Well worth it for our troops!!
I just have auto pilot. I considered upgrading to IP at the begining of the year, but after thinking about it, I didn’t want to spend $350-$400 to upgrade a 6 year old motor. To me, auto pilot is needed, but IP is just a “nice to have”.
I think this will probably be a prety cheap fix. I’ll try and get over to the Crappie Hole this week. I’m ready to give it a break for a few weeks anyway. As they get more stressed they’ll be getting harder to get to bite and not much fun to catch when they do. I just hope August is a lot drier than July and they don’t have to run much water.
Thanks to all of you that participated in taking these military people fishing. as a veteran i know what it means to be appreciated. i also know what it means to be spat on while in uniform. (back in the vietnam days) I like the appreciated better. ha ha
Thank you Coolbreeze for your service to our nation! You and my good buddy Rick were over there when I was but a toddler, and I hate to read and hear how you guys were treated by some groups. Hopefully, that’s behind us!
We rode around visiting others and taking pics after we limited:sunglasses: