March who?? Never heard of her! Now APRIL on the other hand...woohoo! :D

Started way too early this morning, used to getting up at 0330 for work and so are my dogs, so I was up and letting dogs out at 0400 and decided to just get rolling. I was at the lake early enough that I doubled back to town, bought snacks and was still launched 45 minutes before sunrise. It poured the first few hours but it wasn't that cold. Once the rain stopped the wind picked up and the temperature fell and the bite ceased!

As the sun came up I noticed small fish busting the surface here and there in close to shore so I threw a floating Rapala a few times to see if I could catch one and see what they were to try and match them up with my baits. Floating Rapalas are great for catching tiny fish and very versatile in the amount of fish species that will hit them. Turned out to be little perch :) This was good news as most of what I already had tied up was perch-esque in color.

I started fishing a jig, working my way deeper and then back shallow. I somehow cut my knuckle on my index finger and noticed I was bleeding a bit so I went all 'blood sacrifice' and wiped it all over my jig LOL! No lie, I caught the first official 'skunk killer' three casts later at 0715 in five feet of water on the jig. If I knew that's all it took I would have jabbed a hole in myself in January! Haha! She hit the jig on the fall and felt like grass at first. 3.9 pounds on the digital scale and 2017 officially under way! Since the fish was suspended and hit a falling bait I decided to try a chatterbait for a bit, works better in the 'stuff' than a squarebill. Fishing a chatter in grass is also the only time I ever peg a trailer hook, makes a huge difference in regards to hang ups and it keeps the trailer from looping around and grabbing the blade on water impact which can be more than a little frustrating, especially on a near perfect presentation. About six casts into the chatterbait I caught number two off some wood cover, she went 4.4 pounds! A few casts after her I caught what would end up being the last fish of the day off a dock and he went 1.3 pounds.

The fish all fought very lethargically but I didn't care! So happy to be off the goose egg! Water temps ranged from 48* to 50.5* and all three fish came from the warmest water.

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