Went out today, second day after opening, with my girlfriend and a friend to the closest lake we could drop my boat in.

We were there about an hour and I had pulled 5 fish in, ranging from 1.5 to 3 pounds. I was especially excited about that because I was catching them on my baits I've been making.

One of them with my jig and craw trailer.

So as the day went by, the bite stopped. They had both given up, and were sitting in the boat, fiddling with their phones, and cracking jokes about me.

Well, after about an hour of that I switched to a green Jungle Jig with one of my own "Watermelon Candy" colored craws like the above on it. No more than 5 casts later, I got bit. And it was a hard hit too. I knew it was a good fish, and I swung for the fences.

She put up a fight, and decided to head under the boat. She was heading for the trolling motor, and I wasn't ready for that. I was reaching for the net with one hand and rod in the other. I felt her go under so I tried to keep her from getting too far, but I must have resisted too hard cause my rod snapped. (It was abused, I wasn't really shocked by it)

I was lucky, though. She surfaced on the other side just long enough to get her in the net. After I got my line out from under the boat, I looked up and both my fishing buddies were just yelling and cheering, wide eyed and trying to now turn on the camera on their phones. She came in at 5 and a half pounds.

Wow what an awesome story! It always pays off when you get a giant after the bite has stopped.

Good story and congrats!

Jeff