Summer's End

We made it back from Utah and I returned to work today.

Meetings, conference calls, and e-mail, and even a birthday lunch (Happy BD Linda!) made for a full day. I headed home in time to retrieve the dogs and mow the lawn. Tracy had a great spaghetti dinner ready as the Braves were getting underway and I finished in time to head over to Evans Lake for a few casts before dark.

It is becoming obvious that the long days of summer are coming to a close and my chances to fish after work will soon be over as well. But not tonight!

I pulled out the fly rod and tried to entice one of the fat summer bass with a red & white Seaducer.

I cast along the edge from the cove to cypress flats and aside from getting spooked by a couple of huge bullfrogs, things were quiet. I finally got a take near the submerged brush pile and snapped the light tippet with an aggressive hookset.

Bass-1
JB-0

Lost the fish and my fly - ouch!

I stayed and worked a purple, conehead, marabou worm-fly, all around the brush pile with no takers and switched to a green chenille weedless worm and picked up a small sunfish.

I moved around to the back side of the Lake and arched a long soft cast to a favored spot up tight to the shoreline. A nice 2-lb bass came up from below the worm and attacked it with a vengeance.

There was no "tap-tap and pause" to this one. I raised up the rod tip and the bass took off like a bullet for the closest weedbed. I had several loops of line off the reel as I had been making some longer casts and each run the bass made took more and more of the slack until I finally had him on the reel.

I had a great time fighting this bad boy and finally skidded him up through the slick weeds along the shore and got his picture.

I continued to fish for a while and got to enjoy this tropical sunset.

Summer's almost over.......