A Few Hours to Kill...

Hooked up on the SUP

School, soccer, work, and finals have kept me really busy the last couple of weeks, and I haven't been able to get out on the water in a while.  This Saturday I had a few hours before Prom, so I loaded up the SUPerFISHal and went bass fishing.  A few weeks ago my Orion 25qt cooler came in the mail.  This cooler is the real deal, from construction, size, and over all sweet look.  It is the perfect size for the SUP and with YakAttack tracks built onto it, it was easy to rig up.  I filled it with a few tackle boxes and bags of PTL plastics and launched the SUP in a local lake.

The Orion is a perfect standing platform for a SUP or small skiff

 I started throwing a popper first thing, and after the first cast I already boated a 17in largemouth.  I worked down the bank alternating between a frog, squarebill, and popper.  Each bait produced bass, with more of the hits coming off the crankbait.

First fish of the day

Once the sun came up, I left the bank and started fishing offshore structure.  This time of year, many of the post-spawn females move towards the deep summertime holes, and stage on shallow ledges.  I tied on a PTL stonedragger football jig and went to work picking apart these shallow ledges.  The first one I found quickly produced several decent bass.  I caught plenty of 16-17in bass with a few larger ones in the 19in range.  I caught most of my bass on the jig, but also caught a few on a Carolina-rig and deep-diving crankbait.  

The Ardent Apex Grand is the perfect reel for ledge fishing 

The biggest bass of the day, a hefty 19in largemouth, had a small turtle in his throat.  The color of my jig matched the turtle exactly and the fish had inhaled both,

Small Turtle inhaled by a Bass

It was awesome to get back out on the water, and even better to find hungry bass! I called it a day at 11:30 and was ready for Prom by 3:30.