Read about all of my Fishing Adventures!
Follow my Fish of 2018
Most of you will probably realize that this is a family fishing trip on a pond, which won't help you for your upcoming tournament and click the X. But, I think that reading this is important. It will be fun, I promise!
I haven't written about Humphrey lake in several years. In fact, I don't think I've talked about it since some of my very first blog posts. So, let me give you some info. Many, many years ago, before my time, our family land outside of Columbia, Tennessee, was turned into a land-trust. On that land-trust is a spring fed pond where I learned to bass fish.
Now, for most of my life, bass fishing was a texas-rigged ribbon tail worm or a lizard and nothing else. Ten year old Zach didn't even know other baits existed that would catch bass. For good reason, too, since it worked so well. My dad and I caught tons of fish on these two baits and he caught the first big bass I can ever remember out of the lake.
As an adult, I would still occasionally go up and fish the lake. This tapered off to the point where I only went up there once every year, at the most. Part of that was because the lake had some serious issues that were impacting the fishing, namely that the lake had a hole in it that was severely impacting the spawn. Numbers and quality of fish were very poor. You can read about some of those repairs that were done by clicking the links below from 2012.
Every year, the family reunion is the first Saturday in June. It isn't at the lake anymore, but just down the street. Just in case, I always bring a rod or two. But, I don't think I have actually fished since 2014. Again, some of it is about time. Some of it was the state of the lake.
But as we pulled up the road and I was able to see the lake for the first time in years, I could tell things had changed. First, the lake was full. Second, a line of trees had been allowed to grow down an arc of the lake that historically had never had cover of any sort. in truth, only about 60 degrees of the lake has any shade at all and no cover for bait fish, which I believed was part of the problem.
As you can see in the first picture, there had been an algae bloom, so I got out my frog rod. Meanwhile, I rigged up a PowerTeam Lure's Swinging Hammer Swimbait on the kids' Zebco combo. Alyse was fishing with a wacky rigged and weightless PTL Sick Stick. She caught fish. I caught fish. Then, it finally happened. Gavin (6 years old), was casting the swimbait and he hooked into one. Just watch!
Yes, I did have to help him. There was a brush pile and I didn't want this tank to get caught in it. But, Gavin (with some help from Griffin) was able to catch this monster!
It was truly a surprise and, if it weren't for the heat, we would have kept catching them. But, we were hot and sweaty and had places to go.
Just let this be a reminder: you don't have to fish out of a $70K bass boat to catch great fish. And, (talking to myself) you don't have to be fishing a tournament to have fun.
I've always heard that to get kids hooked on fishing, you have to be quick to quit on the bad days and make sure you make the most of the good days. Well, we certainly did that!
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