Brad, Shawn, Helen, Mike and George

Sunny and Warm, Water Temperature 87* and Clear.
This morning I got out early and caught 175 baits and picked my clients up at their dock at 5:30. As I shook their hands greeting them I noticed Mike's hand was slimy with suntan lotion. I advised them to wear the lotion but I had them was their hands with a no sent soap in order not to spook the fish. I have had clients on board with lotion on their hands only catch 1/5 of the fish that other fisherman on board who had clean hands caught. I also instructed them on how to deploy the lines and told them that this time of year if they look at my journal and they see pictures of clients holding up large stringers of fish, those clients listened and understood how to put the baits in the Stripers face in order to get a positive reaction from the fish to strike. I also said the pictures with small stringers usually clients had trouble deploying the baits and missed the short windows of opportunity to catch schooled fish this time of year. I think I got their attention, by 7:20 we had 22 keeper Stripers in the cooler. We set up on some scattered pods of fish this morning and I kept the boat moving slowly to keep hitting the different groups of Stripers. We were doing very well till we got busted by an inconsiderate troller in a Sea Pro. He had seen us boating some nice Stripers and decided to try to run his lures next to my boat. I asked him not to come so close to me, so he veered off a little. Needless to say, he succeeded in spooking the school of fish we were working so we had to move. Ten thousand acres of lake to fish, fish all over the lake, we are 35 yards off the bank, the lake is a half mile wide, no other boats in sight, they have to come over and ruin our fishing, go figure! Anyway we went and found a couple of more schools, did the same drill, caught dozens of more fish, got busted again and would move again. At one point we had about 20 baits left so I decided to go uplake where there were no boats and burn up the rest of the baits. We caught a couple of Stripers then I saw a school on the depth finder. I told them to get ready and Brad hooked up and landed one, backed up to the front of the boat so Shawn could take his fish off and hollered "Ut Oh". We all looked up at him as he was about to fall out of the boat but he sat down on the trolling motor and saved his fall. After everyone stopped laughing we caught a couple more fish that were hooked up and called it a day. Today everyone had a great day and a lot of fun, I lost count of how many fish we caught altogether but we kept 24 Stripers and released the others to fight again. We were able to get off the water by 9 before the day turned too hot to enjoy.