My Eventful Valentines Day Trip To Rock

16" VMC Fly Jig w/Maki Jamei (purple) & spike

I had a close call on the way to the lake this morning with some deer.  I was really lucky to the first one crossed so far in front of the others, so I slowed way down quickly.  I had to come to a complete stop to avoid hitting the second one.  There were several other deer in the ditch looking at me.  Whew!

7:15AM-1:30PM Rock Lake mostly at my spot.
Conditions: 31-28℉, Mostly Sunny, Windy to Very Windy NW, waypoint holes to 11'

When I first got out of the truck

I fished in the morning because of the forecast for high winds in the afternoon and evening.  The plan was to fish with my old Aqua-Vu so I drilled out the waypoint holes first thing.  I sent the transducer down the hole and immediately was marking fish.  I sent down a minnow on the Glow Demon and was bit immediately.  I maybe got a little anxious with the hook set and lost the fish and minnow halfway up.  I quickly put on another minnow and immediately got bit again.  I landed a 9.5" crappie and thought to myself.  It's AWWWWWWWWWWN.  By the time I got the next minnow down the crappies had moved on.  That was my only crappie for the morning.  I saw one other come through on the camera.

7" Tubby Jig w/Jamei and wax

 I started getting some sunfish and also had spottail shiners nibbling at me.  The sunfish started only pecking and staring at my bait and a few perch showed up as well.  I had a pike come in a couple of different times, but it didn't show any interest in hitting my baits.

I went and drilled holes on the four-hole house spot and in 11' of water.  There was nothing but perch in the four-hole spot, so I moved on to the shallow spot.  I was seeing perch and had a small pike come through once again showing no interest in hitting my baits.  The wind started cranking up and I was just about to give up when a bass appeared out of nowhere (it came in from behind the camera) and came in and hit the Fly.  I set the hook and she immediately started peeling line (2lb test Gamma).  I went to pull the transducer out of the hole and the Fish Trap started moving so I had to sit down immediately.  It was a real challenge getting the transducer out of the water.  I thought the bass was possibly hung on the Aqua-Vu cable because something didn't feel right, so I pulled that up as well.  The bass finally came up the hole.

16"

I stayed and fished for another hour hoping another bass might come through, but all I saw was perch.

I then decided to tow the Fish Trap just to the South of the access.  I fished there in 11' to 6' of water and didn't see any activity on the Vex.

I brought the Fish Trap back to the truck to pack up.  It was pretty warm out so I wrote in my notebook when I quit fishing and went to put my jacket in the truck and pulled the iPod out of my pocket so I could continue to listen to it while I broke things down.  I decided to reposition one of my pole clips, then got everything in the car.  I went to put the iPod back in my jacket's inner pocket and my cell phone wasn't there.  What?  Crap!

I went and looked around the holes I had been fishing, nothing.  I went back to the truck and my notebook wasn't in the pocket either.  I could have sworn I put it back in the pocket.  I looked around outside and didn't see anything.  I was really puzzled.  I was in a semi-protected area and it wasn't really windy enough there for my notebook to get blown away.  I got in the truck to go and drive back to where I started to look for the phone.  I grabbed to inspect my jacket one more time.  That is when I realized there are interior pockets on both sides of the Ice Armor Jacket, not just one like the Arctic Armor jacket.  The phone and notebook were right where I left them. Doh!

1 Bass
2 Crappie
2 Pike
5 Spottail Shiners
12 Sunfish
14 Perch