Dogfish Day Afternoon

[djkimmel]

Thank goodness for some really good fishing the past few weeks... actually pretty much this whole season. Helps me forget today didn't go so well or as planned...


I'll start with a picture because it is the only one I took today. My 1st bass of the day and I really didn't catch much bigger all day.

I went to Round Lake again with visions of topwater excitement at least in the morning. I broke out my best popper from past visits. Missed a small bass fairly quick. Well... it missed me.

Then a few casts later I had a really nice bass BLAST the popper but it missed too! I wasn't seeing as much surface activity as average there but enough I thought I could get them. Because I wasn't getting the bites or the bites were missing I added in tossing the Bullet Craw too catching about half my landed bass including the one above on it.

I don't know if I was zigging when I should have been zagging, or what?!? I seemed to be close to feeding bass quite a few times but I couldn't trigger the bigger fish to hit my presentations. Then I would get a good bite... and I would lose it!?!

I added in another confidence lure - the Kustom Kicker Depo$it Swim Jig from recent Lake Ovid success and whacked a few bass but also a couple hammer handles. I saw a boil and pitched to it. Whap! Dogfish...

It must have been the heavy cloud cover because half the time I tossed to a boil I would hook or lose a dogfish! I would have took a picture but you know how those things twist up your line, and jump and spin and twirl, and our hard to hold onto just in general... I could see my new phone ending up in the bottom of Round Lake...

Besides, it is Sunday today and the weekend, so I had an audience most of the time and I figured they'd all think I was weird trying to take pictures of dogfish...

I also found a deeper, isolated weed patch I didn't know about before and was popping a Bullet Craw through it when TUNK! Clean cut me right off. Pretty sure it was one of the few, notorious bigger pike that haunt Round Lake's open waters.

It was just that kind of day. I was getting hot feeling like I was slow baking under that heavy cloud cover. An actual jet ski showed up towing skiers and tubes mostly right past me, of course... Having only landed 6 small bass and a couple pike and some dogfish I decided to call it a dog day of August afternoon and head home.

Not sure what went wrong today but I lost and missed twice as many fish as I landed. I know some of them were bass but many of them felt like more dogfish and pike. Good thing I've had some really good fishing days lately. Helps to soothe the burn of a lackluster day today.

I'll get them next time! (Maybe it was my new phone?!? Some kind of new phone camera jinx...?? Then my next trip should be good. The lesson here would be - don't drop your old phone and break the screen.)