Storm Warning

This evening I decided to hit up my local pond before the severe thunderstorms hit.  I rigged up with a donkey rig and football jig.  I opted to only take out a bag of flukes for replacements; this would cause me to dedicate my limited fishing time to fishing and not retying.

Once on the lake I immediately started fishing the shallower water with only one dink on the donkey rig.  A bit discouraged I switched over to my football jig.  I hopped it and dragged it across the bottom, but never got a hit.  I slowed my retrieve down, but still could not get any takers.  I looked up towards the sky and saw I had 30minutes, at most, before the storm would be upon me.

I then saw bass busting baitfish in about 10FOW.  I grabbed my donkey rig and danced it right through the school and paused it.  When I started reeling the slack out I felt weight and set the hook.  Immediately the fish took off running and I was getting towed around for a nice sleigh ride.  After about 30-40seconds I got it yakside and got excited.

Up till this time I had only caught bass in the 8-12in length in this lake, but this was a solid fish.  Instead of opting for my fish grips I reached down and heaved fish, weeds, and water into my kayak.  It was my first decent fish at 17.5in.

After a couple pictures I released the fish and looked for the school again.  My first cast back into the school yielded another fish.  This one fought harder; it had longer runs and went aerial more than once.  Once I got the bass yakside I did the same thing as the previous fish; I heaved everything into the kayak.

This one was much broader than the previous fish and would go a shade over 19in.  I was elated, and took some pictures and released the fish for another day.  Despite working the donkey rig hard in the school for my final 15minutes I could not find another fish before the storm snuck up on me.

Although I only landed three fish, I learned a lot about fishing the donkey rig and my local pond.  Catching those fish has renewed my faith in the lake, and I know I will be fishing their a lot more before heading back to school.