11-08-09 1st Winter Fishing at Bartlett Lake

Yet another beautiful day fishing! Looks to be the last warm fishing day of 2009...and the fishing was tough! They were biting but we had to work hard for every fish. Bartlett lake is down well over 50ft. making it very hard to find our old favorite spots. I did not have any good luck with my trolling rig, got 4 or 5 bites but never caught any of them. We ended up catching six hybrid bluegill and one bass. The funny thing is, last time we were only catching green sunfish and this time we're catching only hybrid bluegill. Odd!

We did have a bit of drama early in the day! While reeling in our very first hybrid of the day a 4lb. bass came up and ate it! Dad fought the bass for awhile before the bass let it go. But he wasn't done, the bass came right back and attacked the hybrid bluegill again! I thought for sure we had him this time! Wouldn't you know it, the first time in my memory we forgot to bring up the net from the back of the boat. Dad tried his best to get the bass out of the water but I guess the bass did not want it that bad and let the bluegill go right as dad lifted him out of the water. We couldn't believe it, what luck! :-\ That poor bluegill was all chewed up. We decided to let it go, figured it's luck was better than ours that day! I cannot believe we did not land that fish! BUMMER!

Dad and I broke open a fresh 2007 MRE and we even ate the jalapeno cheese spread. I have to say, the 2007 cheese spread is way better than 2005 cheese spread! lol I guess not all cheese ages well. We ate the chicken with salsa and Mexican rice on the boat while I used the sonar to map the bottom of the bay. The MRE even came with cappuccino!

I think we will be pulling the boat out for the rest of the season and spend our time fishing for crappie off of marina.

I almost forgot, one of the mountains behind the lake was completely on fire! There was no moon out tonight, so you could see the whole mountain top glowing orange. It was both and scary and awesome to see!