Hunt Smart, Fish Hard: A Five-Gallon Bucket

This was one day Eric and I won’t forget for a long time coming. There is no other way to say it but when the spawn is on, it’s on! I pick up Eric and we head to Holiday Lake instead of Sandy River because my truck was still not running right. I didn’t want to take a chance and go all the way to Sandy River and have my truck break down. This is one time I made the right decision. We pull up to the dock and get everything unhooked to put the boat into the water. For whatever reason it was, something said look into the water. We couldn’t believe our eyes on what we saw.

Right at the boat dock there were between 100 and 150 big fish swimming all over the place. At first glimpse I thought they were all crappie from where I was standing. I told Eric to grab his pole and start casting. I said we will fish here until another boat shows up. My first cast I pulled the lure right through the whole school of fish and nothing hit the lure. The same thing happened to Eric. I didn’t understand why they aren’t hitting my go-to money lure. I hurry and grabbed another pole with another money lure and this time, Bam! This didn’t fight like a crappie. It turned out to be a school of big bull sunnies, big thick backs on them. I told Eric to hurry and get the five-gallon bucket. Just then a boat was coming to the dock and we had to put my boat into the water now. I didn’t want to leave this spot for no reason but I had to.

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