Tom, Bobby and JT

May 11th, 2009: Cloudy and rain, Water Temperature 68* and clear.

Got out real early this morning, caught bait and picked the guys up about 5:45 am. Set up over some main lake flats and humps pulling 10 Planner boards, a bobber and 4 downlines. We worked about a half a mile before we got our first strike, it came on a board over 20 feet of water. We worked the area for a while longer then move to another area working points, flats and humps. First thing this morning I told the guys we will have 30 Stripers hook up today and pull drag, that if they did what I told them to do they would catch 30 Stripers. There are 3 easy rules that work when fishing with circle hooks and on my boat. 1...Do not set the hook, 2...Do not touch the line and 3...Follow the fish. When fishing 15 rods with live bait at a time if a fish wants to eat he is going to hit our baits, and when he does if you abide by these 3 simple rules we will be able to boat the fish. The reason I am telling this is that by the end of the day we did have thirty fish on and pulling drag, and after making a couple mistakes of setting the hook they caught on and had a great day. Back to the day, around 8am we hit the edge of a flat next to a drop off and the 4 downlines went off and 3 boards hooked up, all at once. Naturally there was some confusion, not many people are quite prepared for such an event. Needless to say they managed very well and boated 5 of the 7 Stripers, all very nice size. After untangling a couple lines I put out another spread and hit the area again, popping a couple more. We then pulled off that area and went and worked some downline fish, ending the day with Bobby fighting the 30th fish we had hooked up today. The guys kept some nice Stripers, we took a picture and weighed the fish, largest over 13 pounds and total stringer weight of 112 pounds. [See JD, I told you I would not rag on you very much]