Thought the lake would be on right now, and was right. Plenty of small lure sized fish available for the catching. Fished mostly weightless plastics to make the fall appealing while skipping docks and pitching at cover. Found fish in water under 12 feet. Kids hit plenty of small ones and I caught my fair share of these greedy little guys. It just makes me smile to see a 4" fish caught on a 6" cut tail. I caught a 3 1/2 pounder (weighed on a scale) almost 19" LMB while fan casting in front of a dock that held s spawning lady just a month or so ago. Yeah Tdot, that same dock we worked for quite some time.

Now for the story:
My boat was not positioned well, and my bail was not closed when he started to take line. I quickly flipped the bail closed and set the hook. While my drag was running I was fighting off the children who were ALMOST as excited as I was. I am not sure of the actual events that led up to me actually boating the fish, everything was just a blur. I believe that I focused my super powers and used two of my hands to lift my children, each by the colars of their lifejackets, while I must have used my other two hands to fight the fish and ensure that I was not wrapped up in the dock. He took me straight for the lilly pads of course, and spun circles in them only to make matters worse. I thank god that he did not go under the dock and THEN to the weeds. I ended up having to bring up the whole plant with the fish attached! Boy am I glad that I have been listening and had the reel set up with some nice heavy Fluoro and not my usual 10lb stuff.

Hope to get back there without the children some day, so I can leave the super powers at home.

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