This was the icing on the cake from a trip to Houston and Florida a few weeks ago. Here is the rest of the story.
Flew into Houston on Tuesday morning and after being delayed in the air for an hour and a half, finally landed. I was meeting Trey Kistler at the airport and my first sight out the doors was his truck and his new Skeeter ready to go.
This was my first chance to meet with Trey and I was looking forward to going after some big Texas Toads. There was a pile of bad weather floating around the Houston area, so, instead of going to Sam Rayburn, we headed to Lake Conroe.
After waiting for the local general store guy to figure out how to do a license for a Canadian (apparently I was the first they ever had), we were on the lake.
We fished hard, starting off trying to pick an aggressive fish with spinnerbaits and a MONSTER swim bait with no luck, so we decided to slow down and switched off to 7" Senkos and started to pick fish.
We were fishing with a big cold front coming in and the fish were real picky. There were some fish on beds, but they were really tight lipped. We threw to one fish about 20 times each with everything in the boat pulling baits right across the bed with no luck.
Lake Conroe was tough and we boated a bunch of bass, but nothing huge, but I did have one giant bass swipe at a jig off a big mat but he missed it clean.
It was a blast fishing with Trey and I'd go back to Texas in a second to fish for a big pig.
FYI They had a tournament on Conroe that past weekend and there were 13 stringers over 26lbs and the winner was 5 fish for 32lbs.
Okeechobee was much more fun - I LOVE that lake. My tournament partner Pierre happened to be down on business so we hooked up Wednesday night in Clewiston to fish Thursday morning.
We reserved a guide at Roland Martin Resort, Jerry Ware and met him there at 7:00 am. Jerry is from Illinois and now a Florida resident and on regular rotation at the resort - I would highly recommend him.
We left the marina shortly after 7. The lake had changed ALOT since I last fished it. Water was way down but still lots to fish. We started off fishing a rock ledge with top water baits.
Jerry was fishing with us and he boated a small 2lber first. Even small largies fight way harder than anything we have in Canada - they fight more like smallmouth actually.
On my fifth cast I had a strike and as the lure disappeared I waited a sec and set the hook. The fish started pulling drag almost immediately and I was surprised 'cause I thought I had my reel drag buttoned right down, but then I knew they fought harder down there.
I pulled up on the rod and then I saw it was a BIG fish. That's when I said to Pierre "GIANT!!!". He looked over and said "oh my". Then Jerry looked and said it was a big fish - when he confirmed it, I knew it was decent.
I fought it for what seemed an hour but was only about a minute - I was using a Kistler Magnesium 7ft Medium Heavy and 15 lb Stren braid that handled her - no problem. Reached down at the side of the boat and pulled her in. I could fit my whole fist in her mouth and her eyes were popped out the side of her head (apparently they do that when they are that big).
We put the scale on her and she was a solid 8 1/2 pounds.
I handed my camera phone to Pierre to take a picture and he looks at me and says "your shaking". I said "no kidding I'm shaking dude". It was the biggest bass I'd ever seen and I was blown away that I had caught her off that rock pile. After that I was done, really, but we kept fishing.
We caught a pile more fish from 2-5lbs and we capped off the day with another 8lber. Our guide Jerry said catching two big fish on lures in the same day was pretty much impossible. It was a great experience. Our five best would have put us over 27lbs.
Matt
