Started the morning late on the lake. Dropped the boat in at about 7:30 and headed to the north end of the lake. Wind was blowing about 20 mph constant with faster gusts. Rain was constant with periods of rain so hard couldn't hear my buddy at the other end of the 12 ft smokercraft. After fighting the wind running down the lake and back up only makeing a few casts due to the inablility to control the boat with my trolling motor headed into the wind i ducked into a little cove on the other side of the lake to get out of the wind. Cove was only 3-4 ft deep but atleast i could get some casts in. After tossing my pumpkin seed senko at everything i tossed it out in the center of the cove twitching it back with long pauses between retrieve. On my third twitch my line went taught and it was on. After about a minute this big ol guy trying to drag my rod under the boat my buddy was able to snatch him up from the water. Beautiful fish and well worth the trouble. My scale had dead batteries so I was unable to weigh him but I think he may have broke my LMB record to this date of 5.5 lb. (Only a guess though). After we gnabbed a quick pic he was released unharmed to live another day. We braved back out into the wind for only a short time longer before my hands started turning purple because of the cold. Was having a hard time holding the rod. Total time on lake was about 2.5 hours with only about and hour of actual fishing time. Rough day but well worth it.

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