I flew in to Albany new York Friday morning, went to visit family, Saturday morning my brother and I hit our favorite lake from childhood, and it was a blast.
we fished an unnamed 100 acre lake that my family likes to keep secret. I started off targeting the slab crappies that inhabit the lake and it was fantastic immediately. We started fishing at 6:00 am and the bite was on fire. I started off using a small hula popper, because my brothers gear was pretty limited, still worked great though! I caught and released about a dozen 9-12" black crappies before I caught a real slab 14", beast of a crappie. And it was on. I caught one after the other 9"-14" and slab bluegill of 7"-10" , I only caught 1 dink lmb and 1 13" lmb. After 4 hours my brother and I collected a couple bluegill for cutbait, and started targeting catfish and bowfin. Every 20 minutes we would get a slamming hit, but due to my brothers limited hook selection we had a very difficult time setting the hook. Finally after an hour he hooked into a beast, got it to shore got it onto the bank and fumbled it, it snapped his cheap 8lb test mono, and back in the water went about a 22" 4lb male bowfin, before we could snap a pic :/
I still had a blast, just wish I had my own gear with me. All told, I caught roughly 25 crappie, 25 or so bluegill, and 2 lmb. Looking forward to my next visit.

---