Ben and Allen

September 17th, 2009: Cloudy and cool, Water Temperature 77* and Clear.

I have been off the water for a few weeks, my wife was diagnosed with Melanoma recently so I decided to take some time off to spend with her. We have been busy with numerous test and she finally was able to have her operation on the 9th and is recovering now. We are still waiting for results from a biopsy and praying we will get some good news soon. I would like to thank all of you who have missed my posts and emailed me inquiring about me not fishing lately.Your thoughts and prayers were very welcome.

I wanted to get out today and locate some bait and fish for my clients tomorrow so I met my friends Bob and Allen at the marina before light and started cruising the lake. I checked most of the creeks and coves for fish and bait and ran all the way uplake to check for bait. By 9:15 I had still not caught any bait so we made a long run back down lake and pounded an area where we knew we could catch bait and by 10 we were ready to fish. We had seen some Stripers earlier below Hunters so we set up a spread of 9 boards, a bobber and 5 downlines and pulled about a mile exploring different depths. After more than an hour we had nothing to show for our efforts so I made a move. We ran to the back of a creek and put out the spread again and after another hour we had had a few boils but no hook-ups. Then we hit a stretch of water and everything on the shallow side went off. We continued to check out other areas catching fish on the same pattern. The east wind probably did not help much today but I am confident about fishing tomorrow. The guys only wanted to keep 3 fish so they kept the first 3 they caught but had to keep one additional one because it was hooked deep and probably would not live. We took pictures of 2 of the larger fish and released them along with numerous others.