Fishing Tale

Today my awesome wife let me go fishing by myself while she kept busy with the kids and garage-sell day at our neighborhood. I had planned to go scout this area for an hour or so but ended up staying for 4+ hours...

The place I had chosen is not Watson lake as I had planned earlier in the week. I ended up going to Arapaho Bend instead, which is a lot closer! The reason for the change of location is because a co-worker said someone caught a record bass there and I wanted to see if I could catch bass with lures. I managed to find information about this small place on-line and the type of fish available. It does not have trout though...

Equipment list:
rod - Ugly Stik Lite (Ultra lite 6'6")
reel - Daiwa Exceler 2000
line - 8lb tested Trilene XL clear/white
lures used - jighead, heddon baby torpedo, zebco minnow

I did not bring any live-bait because I used to fish with them and I want to try something different. Needless to say, my first attempt a week ago with gold kastmasters lure ended up with it getting stuck to a tree branch in the water. Hence, this time I bought a topwater lure (Heddon baby torpedo) to stay away from underwater branches.

After two+ hours of topwater lure and fake minnow lure, I gave up and switched to neon-green jighead instead...

That's when I caught a fish on the first cast!

Well, not exactly.. I pulled the fish (~10 inches) to within 3 feet of the shore and that's when I lost it. I think it looked like a bass but I can't be sure. I am pretty sure it is not a carp since I have the image of carp firmly imprinted in my head with CherkyB's catch.

Later I finally caught one for real at a different spot...

It was a sunfish (~5 inches)... and I let it go after spending 2-3 minutes getting the jighead hook out of his mouth. It's amazing how this little guy managed to devour the entire lure/hook with so little room for me to get the hook out.

I don't have proof of the catch as this is a fishing tale. I don't have any picture since I didn't have my camera with me -- yes, it does sound convenient doesn't it?

Overall, I would say I like Arapaho more since it's not as sloped as the edge of the lakes at Riverbend. There seems to be fewer fish jumping out of the water at Arapaho compared with Riverbend though. It will be interesting to see if I will ever catch a bass...