Rock Off

I headed off to Rock a little after 4:45pm and was surprized that there was only one rig in the lot. CO Kuske was there with his boat on the trailer and he was giving out two separate citations to people with ATV's. I took my sweet time getting ready and was on the water and fishing by 5:30pm. The wind was blowing strong from the SE but the Rock Platte River Outlet (RPRO) where I planned to fish is protected enough that you don't have heavy wave action. The RPRO is a fair sized shallow bay that fills up with pads and other weeds in the summer. In the Spring the bay can fill up with bass and that was what I was hoping for. Because of the heavy breeze I elected to drift with the wind from East to West. The RPRO runs more East/West than North/South. My first pass was made on the more protected South shore. One thing I noticed was that the water was very clear so expected the action to be on long casts and where the wind put some ripple on the water. I started off throwing a Zoom Horny Toad and I started things off with just an explosion for a hit by a big bass, but I did not hook up. What a pain! For me Horny Toads are high maintance baits. Most of the time I have to Super Glue the Toad to the bait keeper and Toad legs have a way of getting bitten off. I had two rods rigged to Toad. On the first pass I caught two 15+ inch bass and missed 4 stikes losing two Toad bodies. I did some fishing on the West end and along the North side going into the wind with little to show for it. I then went on a bunch of different drifts catching 1 to 2 fish a drift. Towards dark the wind was really shooting straight down the pipe and I quit using Horny Toad and switched to the "lost jig" which got me a few more fish. On average the fish were bigger than this morning but I didn't get anything bigger than 16.5". I also caught I scrawny pike. I think several pike had a hand in wrecking a few Horny Toads. I quit at about 8:45pm with a total of 13 bass landed which is a bit of a disappointment because I was hoping the RPRO would be packed with bass.

On the West end of the RPRO there is a beaver dam and I had a shot at a big fish there 3 separate times. Twice it didn't hook up and the third time it was on and felt like the best fish of the night, but it got off. Maybe it was a dogfish.

There was still a little light left when I was all done loading up the boat so I headed to the GOMH and caught 4 solid bass on the "lost jig." I tried a little topwater with a Spook but there weren't any takers.

So for the day I caught 41 bass with the biggest being 16.5" .

Tommorrow I am gonna get up early and hit the GOMH from shore to see if I can outfish what I did on Sullivan today.