A well-deserved day off and fishing with my good fishing buddy Bob. We picked Thurston's Black lake as I had never fished it and it had been awhile for Bob. Started the day at 6am. We cut across from the boat launch and started fishing the shoreline, only to find it full of weeds and slime. "Yuk". I thought. After about 45 minutes of cleaning junk off my lures I told Bob that maybe we should try a different lake. Bob talked me out of it and we ran down several hundred yards where the shoreline was more hilly and the lake had a better drop-off. That solved the weed issue and we renewed our quest in earnest. About an hour or so into fishing the shoreline Bob got the skunk out of the boat with a 5-6" smallmouth (well, everything about it was small). It didn't take too long and the second fish of the morning came - a solid 19", 3 lb largemouth bass caught by me on a floating rapala imitation. A great fish that we found was hanging on by the thinnest of margins! That fish got our piscatorial juices flowing. But it was Bob that had the fish of the day - and reaffirmed my belief that he is one great bass angler. We were drifting while I was tying a lure on and we came right up to a partially submerged log sticking out of the water. I commented that I had seen a small bluegill swimming near the surface. Bob decided to flip a jig down the side of the log. Me, I thought "what a waste of time - our boat is one foot away from the log in six feet of water - anything down there is long gone". Well you guessed it - Bob promptly hooked into a nice 15" smallmouth bass. I would never have even tried that spot, which shows why I'm just a beginner and Bob is the Master Bass Angler. The rest of the morning was uneventful. I missed several nibbles and briefly had a nice one on. But that fish of Bob's made my day (oh, mine wasn't too bad, either). Great weather, water a warm 70 degrees. Nice lake!

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