Fishing

I went fishing on Saturday on the most monster fishing tour of my life with my best friend Scot, his wife and a fishing guide named Bob. We had an incredible day unlike any fishing trip I've ever experienced.

416

First, let me preface this summary about our day by giving a quick background of previous fishing trips that I've had with Scot:

• * I lost my cell phone while trekking through the woods following a stream - we never caught any fish
• * I caught a bridge - couldn't land it, though, so left it intact attached to land.
• * The engine quit on us less than 30 minutes out - had to swim the boat back to shore
• * Many, many, many trips where the entire fish count caught was under 5

So, we'd been talking about hiring a guide for awhile to maybe show us what we were doing wrong, or to learn us on something else. I had the fortunate circumstances to get the name of a guy in Little Elm off Lake Lewisville that came highly recommended (it's harder than I thought to find a good fishing guide that is reasonably priced and will produce results). Found a guy named Bob (not a "fishing name" despite the obvious pun) who focuses on sand bass. He took us out to Lake Ray Roberts which is about 45 minutes north or so of where I live.

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We got there and put in, then went to a spot and threw in. Now, for lures, Bob had rigged up a slab at the bottom w/ a tri-hook, and then had a leader with a fly about 2 feet up from there off a braided line. The flies are made by a kid who is the son of a friend of his (one of those "Sure, I'll try them out - hey, these work - kid, you're in business - make me a whole bunch") and the slabs are made by another contact of his. Well, we were there less than 5 minutes without a nibble and Bob tells us to reel in, and off we go to another spot. We put in, and within minutes are catching fish. Now, we "only" caught 45 at this spot.... um, yeah - 45. That's an amazing amount for me - our day is already a success. Out of those 45, we kept maybe 20-25 "keepers" towards our 75 (3-man limit for sand bass on a lake in Texas).

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So, fishing dries up so we move to another hump, and put in. Oh. Nellie. We start pulling in fish at a ridiculous rate - I mean, just sick. Now, our guide is all inclusive - this means that he provides all the tackle, drinks, snacks, plus works with the fish and fishing gear. That means I don't even have to pull the fish to myself and pull them off the hooks - I just bring them up to the boat, and there's Bob grabbing the fish off and throwing them back or into the boat if they're keepers. The three of us are all hitting doubles - two fish on the line at once - and pulling them in so fast, Bob is just running in circles pulling them off. We had fish all over the bottom of the boat flopping around us - it was AWESOME! The whole time, Bob is keeping count of the fish on a click-counter around his neck. During this time, we hit over a hundred fish

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We moved onto another spot not far from that spot where Bob had taken a guy the previous week and caught a 20 and 30 pound catfish. This turned out to be our money spot - we hit somewhere around 130 fish on this spot alone, just marking fish off the point and drifting through it. The fishing was so good there, that we spotted a boat with 2 adults and 2 kids about a hundred yards off that weren't catching anything, and we called them in to fish along that spot as well - made their day, and let me tell you - there's something really cool about hearing a child gleefully snag a fish and pull them in proudly.

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After awhile, we were still catching, but we decided to see more of the lake, so we pulled in and sped off to the other side. We experimented with a few spots, hit a marina and the like, but didn't catch didly squat (I caught two tiny large mouth bass on that side of the lake, but we only snagged one other fish the whole time). This was a good 2-3 hours of touring before we went back to our "money side". However, while we were in the marina, I was talking to one of my party about our count which was at 271 fish for the day at that point, and a woman in the marina overheard me and shrieked, "How many?!?" with jaw to the ground. She couldn't stop staring at me increduously as her brain tried to wrap itself around 271 fish caught. She had no idea....

We hit a spot with a lot of bird activity - where there's tiny fish, there's big fish, right? How true... how true. This final money spot of the day produced another 145 fish to bring our grand total up to 416. But, this is also where we landed a trophy fish - a big cat. Let me tell you, this was the coolest fish land of my life as I reeled in a catfish bigger than my leg which we weighed in the boat at 21 pounds. Yes, 21 pounds - that's a huge fish, let me tell you. The lake record for Ray Roberts is somewhere around 26 pounds for a cat, so I was feeling pretty good about that one. We didn't keep him (bad eating, and what am I going to do with a fish that big? Let someone else have a great catch some other day!)

So, total fish count for the day was 416 fish broken down like this:

• * 411 Sand Bass (we kept 75 fish over 11 inches long - the 3-man limit for the state of Texas is 25 each at least 10 inches)
• * 3 Large Mouth Bass (too small to keep)
• * 2 Catfish (a 6 pounder and a 21 pounder - we kept the 6 pounder)
• * 1 Grate (a metal grate - lol)
• * 1 Stick-Fish (you know, a stick off a tree - lol)
• * 1 Jackalope Antler set (a wood clump that reminded us of a Jackalope)

What a day! I brought my Nikon D70 digital camera with me, and many of the pics were taken w/ a UV filter - check them out:

Fishing Pictures (click to see)

About Bob the Fishing Guide:

I think it's important to share the information about Bob LaMarch the Sand Bass Fishing Guide. Not only was he a ton of fun, but it turned out after talking to him that he's like us, 2old2play. He's in his 30's, is married and has kids, but loves gaming (and drinking) - he currently is hitting COD4 pretty hard. Now, if you're ever remotely close to the Dallas area and want to have a great time fishing all day w/ a fun guy, contact Bob. His website at www.SandBassGuide.com. You may not catch 416 fish - even he ackowledged that that was beyond excellent - but, you'll have a good time. His gamertag is sandbassslayer.

EDIT NOTE: I was reviewing my blog and I accidentally hit "DELETE" so I had to repost it. That's why the comments are gone. There is no "Are You Sure" confirmation message if you hit DELETE. :-(