Went to the Potholes State Park to launch my boat and started fishing at about 7:30. I headed up to crab creek and trolled around with no luck on catching fish. I did manage to lose a $150 fishing rod over the side when I caught a snag. While turning the boat around to unsnag my line the rod was pulled out of the rod holder because I didn’t engage the lock. So I hit the man overboard on the GPS and tried to “snag” the rod with a treble hook but was unsuccessful.

So I left the Potholes to go back home to Moses Lake and I made a dredging tool out of pipe, chain, and size 12/0 treble hooks. I went back to the Potholes later in the afternoon and started dredging my GPS way point. I managed to recover my lost fishing rod. Now that I found my fishing rod I was excited to start fishing, I managed to catch 10 walleye sizes 16-20” along with 2 very large perch and 1 nice 11” crappie.

Since my freezer is getting full of fish I released everything except 4 walleye and the crappie. I was trolling with 3 oz. bottom bouncers and purple homemade spinner rigs behind side planers in 25-35’ of water at 1.2 mph. All in all not a bad day of fishing especially since I was able to recover my fishing rod.
Lesson learned, use your fishing rod holder locks.

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