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| Conner with his four pound bass! |
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| One of Ryan's first bass of the day! |
I had the pleasure of fishing with Ryan and Conner Hess from Pennsylvania last Saturday! We went deep into the glades to one of my secrete spots and found that the fishing has slowed. We focused our efforts on the beginning of the canal first and had fairly good results. I guess we caught four or five one and a half pound fish right from the start. About an hour into the trip, it slowed down, so I decided to take them to the end of the canal where I've always caught a lot of fish. When we got to the end, there were shore fishermen working over my favorite spot. We noticed one guy bow fishing and three more guys and a lady all fishing this one hole. They were an entertaining bunch, but they didn't have a very good effect on the fishing in that area. The only lady there caught the only bass in that section and I think it was her first one ever because she started screaming " I'm not taking it off, I'm not taking it off"!!! We had a good laugh over that! Conner hooked up with a couple of big gars that gave him a nice fight, but the bass were just not hitting. I suggested we run back to the beginning of the canal for one last effort before giving up. Sure enough, the fish were there! Ryan and Conner's casting accuracy and diligence started paying off. Ryan caught a couple of small ones, then Conner caught one. While releasing Conner's fish, I looked over at Ryan and by seeing the expression on his face I realized he had a nice one! It did a couple of beautiful head shaking jumps and somehow the line got wrapped around Ryan's rod tip. He fought that fish very well considering the line wrap. Just as I was about to reach down and grab the fish, the line snapped! NO!! I guess that's all part of the fun. That fish was at least four pounds. Then Conner makes this beautiful cast with the sling worm into a isolated patch of lily pads. He works the worm through the pads beautifully. When the bait reached the outside of the pads, Conner twitched it a couple more times making it dart back an forth. You would have thought this 12 year old had been doing this his whole life. What perfect presentation! After those twitches an underwater torpedo engulfs his sling worm. He sets the hook like a pro! The three and a half or four pound fish put up a great fight! He did a couple of jumps then went deep around the front of the trolling motor and to the other side of the boat. That bass had no chance with Conner behind the rod and before we knew it, he had the big bass in the the boat ready for it's moment of glory in front of the camera! NOW THAT'S HOW YOU END A DAY OF FISHING!!
