First bass for 2010

[66KingFisher]

We took a gamble today since there were thunderstorms all around, and hit one of our small local lakes this afternoon, while it wasn't raining. Its been raining all night and most of the morning, so needless to say, it was a dreary looking day when we started,but it soon cleared up and the sun even came out for an hour or so before it starting looking stormy again.

Things started off slow as I trolled along pitchin a white spinnerbait at the bank, that I soon changed to chartreuse once I realized the water was pretty stained,but that never got me a bite.....So I switched to a DT4 in shad color and still couldn't get a bite......Since the wind died down a bit, I decided to tie on something I could move slower so I went with a jig with a small crawbug trailer, but still nothing, and by this time i'm wondering what to do. Ron had already caught a couple of bream, so I had to do something since I couldn't let him skunk me....lol

To my surprise, water temps were 70-73 degrees. So just for grins, I decided to go with a trusty plastic worm only instead of a regular fliptail or curlytail worm I went with a two tone blue Senko rigged texas style,and low and behold its wasn't long before I'd caught my first bass of the year....not to mention it was the first bass caught in our new Tracker bassboat....hahaha. The measuring board said she was 18" long and I don't have any scales, but we both felt like she weighed a good solid 3#.

Roughly 20 minutes later I picked up the second bass of the same size, and another half hour later I got hit hard and set the hook on what felt like a monster, but unfortunately I'd made a really long cast and I think my mono stretched enough that I didn't get a good hook set and when that big girl broke the surface and shook her big ol' head she tossed my Senko at me, and disappeared outta sight. I'm guessin she might of went 4.5 maybe 5#....dunno, but that was the last hit I got before we had to leave as the storm was building again.

My buddy Ron likes to panfish and he managed to catch a couple of Rockbass, and a couple of bream, and lastly a nice size catfish that I thought he'd never land with his ultralight gear....lol, but he did.....He also caught this perch that instead of being its normal orange/reddish color was as pink as pink could be.....lol. It looked so cool enough that I had to take a picture of it to share with you guys, even though the photo doesn't do justice to how the fish was really colored. And speaking of odd colored fish did you notice the spots on the second bass I caught.....this thing was spotted like a leopard, I kid you not.....I attempted to use photoshop to enhance the closeup pic so you can hopefully see what i'm talking about....i'd never seen a bass with markings like it.....probably something genetic, but it made for a cool lookin fish.

For the record all fish were released to be caught again. We didn't fish but about 3 hrs or so, but we had a ball and really enjoyed the new boat.....Can't wait to go again.