"Gone Fishin" by Jer Ridout-Boat On The Water!!!

Tuesday, May 29th was a day off for me. I was very happy to have an extended break, so I decided to get ambitious and get the boat out! Ethan has been in a lot of trips so far. GMG is on SUMMER BREAK, so he is free now! We wanted to try Twin Anchors, in Colo, because this place is home to one of my hottest fishing fiasco's ever! Last summer I rented another boat, just before I bought mine, and took it out. In 3 hours I ended up with over 50 Bass, but I noticed these fish are very small. Anyway, we had to give it a shot. We were on the water on 8:45 a.m. Little did we know that today was gonna be one of those days where no matter what you tried, it just didn't seem to work. We both used a "Puke" tube to begin with, and Ethan was the one to strike first. I wasn't worried, and never bothered. Sometimes having the kind of week a recently had, (where everything went my way) can satisfy you to the point where your not as competitive the next time out..or being just a bit cocky..I feel I was a bit over confident this day. Soon, we fished a couple banks with moss right off a drop off..which should generally hold fish. Ethan found two more..I was still skunked without a hit. "Whats going on with me today?" I asked myself. I was really off my game, and this follwed a week where I was on the top of my game, and seemingly found every fish swimming last week! Here we are, both of us shocked that its been an hour an a half, and I haven't got a fish!!! We tried a cove with a couple tree stumps. (A cove can do wonders..especially if its consumed by trees shadowing the sunlight) Using a Producto, I had a hit, set the hook HARD, reeled him in..and then he flipped off. Anger started to consume me then. Ethan thought I may be setting the hook to hard, and I was actually tearing the fishes mouth when I did it because they were so small. I set the hook very strong, trying to firmly latch that hook in his mouth, but it seemed I was doing it to hard on such smaller Bass. Being lazy is one thing you can not afford in a day of fishing. The slightest mistake can equal a costly error. This was one of the few times I got lacksidasical. After all the stress these big fish had put on my line in the last week, I figured I could take two minutes out of the day to re-tie my lure. But I figured since the fish in this lake were so tiny I wouldn't need to until I got home. Bad mistake..I threw under a tree hanging over the water, felt a tick, set the hook HARD and the line and hook came undone. Probably wasn't a big fish, but I coulda got him in if I wasn't so lazy. Anger consumed me after missing this fish. After that, I had enough for awhile. I took a break and let Ethan do his stuff. He soon missed one, but that was his first miss so he was pretty calm about it. After cooling down and regaining my composure, I decided to try one more spot with some moss, then told Ethan "You can enjoy your outfishing me moment, and we'll head in". Suddenly, things started to work for me, and with a lighter hook set, I brought in a fish! It was tiny, but at this moment..I didn't care. Moving down this mossy bank with a Hot Rod tube, I felt two more hits..and two more fish!!! All my fish were biting on the River Minnow from Hot Rod Baits (pic shown)  Ethan didn't find any, as I tied him. We fished the bank again saying next fish wins..but after fishing it over and over again, we found no more luck and we decided we were a bit hungry, and headed in. It was noon, lunch hour, and the fishing was halted by a high barometric pressure. Tied at three fish, and I could have had my first fishing trip with a goose egg in over three years! I was still pretty upset and shocked, after all the success I had last year here. But, that was last year..Twin Anchors has actually been rough for me every time this year. I still plan to take my other friends here soon, and see if we can acually find them better. Hope you enjoyed reading about my first boat trip on the water! It was a beautiful day and was great to just relax on it while I had a day off. A lot of friends would sleep in on a day off, except me! Glad I found something at the end, need to fish a little better next time, or I wont come out on top. (maybe I did TOO MUCH bank fishing) Thats the art of fishing, you can ALWAYS get beat on any given day!