Fun in the Sun

What a beautiful day it was!  The temps were in the 60's, the sun was shining brightly, and I even caught a couple of fish.

My initial plan was to go and check on a place that I thought might be thawed, so I came prepared with my pontoon strapped to the rack.

If my plan A didn't work out, I had hopes of floating a lake that surely had some open water.  First stop was plan A, with some photo detours along the way.

Talk about a beautiful place!

Plan A was still frozen, but I saw about 6 feet of recently opened shoreline, although still frozen with a thin sheet of ice.  At that point, I was ready to accept plan B, but then I saw a few fish moving around in that band of clear ice.

So I made like the Romans and hurled a rock in to punch a hole.  Luckily, my rock went through, where others hadn't.

Right away, I had curious patrons coming close to take a look at my jig, but they kept snubbing it.  It happened just often enough to keep my interest for a couple of hours before finally connecting with a pretty cutthroat.

Finally, I had relieved my need to catch one through that hole and could move on to wherever the day took me next.  Forget plans!

Next stop was a nice tail water that I've meant to spend more time on.  My 2nd cast was smashed by a 19 inch brown that showed off some aerials.  That made me smile.

Plenty to look at around there.

So after getting happily sidetracked for most of the day, I eventually got around to the plan B lake for a float on my pontoon.  Unfortunately, the wind was blasting away and my experience would be one from shore again.

After many casts, I was able to hook into 1 rainbow, but called it quits after that.  Even though I had only caught three fish on the day, I was still pretty satisfied, having caught three different species and getting out in the gorgeous weather was just what I needed anyway.

Happy Fishing, Humans.