Trifecta

After deciding to forgo torturing ourselves in the hot sun today, we opted to fish the latter half of the day beginning around 4PM. Just as we hit the water, clouds from the north rolled in and lingered for the duration of the outing. While casting a lure I have been experimenting with for the last couple of days, a Red October "Monster Tube," a nice fish opened its yap and shut it just behind the lure that was gliding slowly beneath the surface. Fortunately, the fish paused and remained focused on the lure, because on the next pull and subsequent pause it coiled up, lunged forward, and smoked the lure. After a few decent runs and a good aerial display, the fish was ours and safely secured in the net. The female taped out at 43.5" and was fitted with an accelerometer.

Shortly thereafter I lost another on a figure-8 (well executed, hookset was the wrong way... oops), and not more than five minutes later John Thibert called in a fish. We zoomed over to John and after lifting the fish into the trough and giving it a good once over, I noticed a Floy tag. However, there were no other marks on it indicating one of 2009's tagged fish, then it dawned on me to flip the fish over. Wouldn't you have it, there was an incision! This was a fish that had a surgically implanted accelerometer and was tagged in April several kilometers down-river.

Before.

After a little over two months of healing (note closed incision, absorbable sutures gone).

After figuring out we were in the middle of an activity period, we headed to another spot and commenced casting. As I turned to watch the wake of a pleasure boat barreling down on our boat, I briefly turned back to look at my lure and noticed a fish following very closely behind the bucktail. I entered the figure-8, as the giant wake rocked the boat, and the fish hit immediately. It taped out at about 34", was fitted with an accelerometer, and quickly released.

All in all, a solid five hours of fishing!

"Get out of my house!"