Cowanesque Lake 6/30/07, site of tournament #3. As usual, I arrived with much anticipation. I was primed. I felt I had all the right lures tied on to start the day given the water temp, weather, and look of the lake. My problem, as usual, is where to start. I went down lake to a place I'd had success before. I was looking for flats that led to a dropoff, or points. I can start off by saying that the bass were not in any shallow water that I covered on this day. I worked my way around the first point alternating between a crankbait, lipless crank, and Maniac salt stick, with nothing happening. As I ducked into the cove there was a fair amount of surface activity. I started with the XPS version of a Lucky Craft Sammy in Ghost minnow pattern. I really liked the action of this lure. I say "liked" because of what happened in the ensuing half hour. I caught a couple of small bass, too short to weigh in. I was making long casts and drawing plenty of interest from the fish. I was sitting in 10 ft. throwing in to 3 ft toward the sparse weedline. I started walking the bait back when I saw a flash of green and heard what could only be described as what sounded like the plug on the lake being pulled! "Whommmp!" Chills covered my body as I thought I'd hooked the lunker bass of the lake! As I got the fish in closer, I discovered it was a musky that was around 3ft. long! Heck of a catch, but not in a bass tourney! My biggest concern was not losing the lure. I managed to free it successfully without bringing the fish in the boat and went about my business. Not a half dozen casts later, I hooked another one! "Fish of 1000 Casts" my butt! This one was smaller, but the toothy SOB managed to take my lure with him. I was without a replacement. I switched to a black Zara Spook, but this didn't draw much interest and is a lot more difficult to work than the XPS bait.

I went throughout the day without landing or even seeing another fish and ended up zeroing for the tournament. Only one limit of fish was caught and a number of others failed to weigh a fish as well.

Forget the bass tourney ! I'd be out there Musky fishing ! :-)

Hey Boss, I'll trade you a 10 lb Bass for a 3 ft Musky ! Not sure about a 15 lb bass though ;-)

Good fishing to you,

Fish