My 2020 DOH! story. Share 'em if you got 'em!

I really can't complain about how I've done in my local waters, especially last pre-spawn, so I lay off them during the spawn. Bass season is closed here anyway starting May 1st through the end of the 1st or 2nd week in June, depending. The past year I fished right up to the deadline and bagged two nice 5 1/2 pounders the last two trips at my home lake. Not giants by most standards, but they had me smiling, and that made the layoff a shade easier. 

 

I hit the ground running after the opener, but it was a bit tougher than I expected. We had very little snowfall during the winter, so the water was quite low. As it turns out, just like in'17, we were in a drought, which only got worse as the season went on.

 

I spent the 1st week picking off smalls. Fishing near bluegill beds has produced a few lunkers for me in the past, so I stuck with it. Then, all of a sudden the tide turned. I was wading with my friend one night and we both started getting hard strikes. Definitely a different class of fish now. He hooked up first with a nice 3 pounder. My turn came when a 5.2 lber gobbled my Miyagi swimmer. Then he bagged a nice 4.4 lber, so we know it was on. 

 

I'm aware of a stand of weeds on top of a hump which is a real good cast from where we were wading. I whaled out a Shellcracker G2 as far as I could, then swam it back just outside the sweet spot. When my rod loaded up I immediately felt that familiar strain in my forearm. Hard charging 3 or 4 pounders sometimes feel much bigger than they actually are during the fight, but the way bigs pull is something quite different, especially in 65 degree water.

 

I cranked this girl in, and when she busted my bud wigged out. She was a whopper. Big head. Big belly. Significantly larger than either of the better fish we'd caught that night.  As she got closer and I got an even better look a panic set it. I could not lose this fish! Normally I'd grab a fish with my large grippers in order to keep a distance from a swim bait with scary hooks, but I didn't this time. I just reached down with my left and lipped her. The bait was hooked on the opposite side of her mouth, so I didn't want to release tension and handed my rod to my friend. 

 

So now I'm really gripping her tightly with my left while I try to unhook her with my right, but the hooks were really in there. Right through a boney part. I held her in the water as I tried to get them out, and that lit a spark in her. She thrashed wildly and flung the bait around. The rear treble hook of the G2 landed nicely into my right thumb's knuckle. Thankfully my bud was there to excise it. A 7lb + well pinned fish in one hand and a grappling hook in the thumb of my other would've been a disaster had I been alone. All of this, mind you, because I wanted that pic so badly that I'd dispensed with my normal cautious practice of using a gripper. Such a boob.

 

So with the hook out of my thumb, finally, I finished removing the G2 from her face. Close to 3 minutes had elapsed since I brought her in, and my lipping hand and thumb were quite fatigued. She was only out of the water for maybe 25 seconds tops during the unhooking/getting hooked fiasco, so she had plenty of O2 and fought me all the way. 

 

Now it's picture time. I lift her straight up in order to cradle her for the horizontal glory shot. I get my right hand under her belly, stupid grin on my mug, and with one huge shake she flops out down at my feet in 2 feet of water. Splash! See ya. I'm glad there wasn't a live action wildlife camera there to capture two lunatics shouting obscenities into the night sky, arms flailing.

 

After all that, it turns out that none of the previous pics turned out anyway. My camera's flash was off. Oh, and I never managed to catch anything close to her for the rest of the season. DOH!