September 19, 1998 - Monte's Metroplex Fishing

September 19, 1998 WOW! This was the absolute best trip of my life! My 10 year old, Ryan, and I went to Ray Roberts with Jake Jacoby of Leisuretime Fishing and boy did he put us on the fish! Ryan caught this one that weighed in at 7.0 pounds.

Jake did just what he talks about on his website. We set up on the edge of the hydrilla beds west of Wolf Island and proceeded to catch more fish than we could count. We estimated that we landed between 40 to 50 fish altogether. Three of them were 7 pounds or more. Ryan caught all three.

It was great to see the whoppers being caught by the only kid in the boat (he hasn't let me forget it either). On our way to the hydrilla beds Jake mentioned that we would try to set out 4 poles. But it took a couple of hours before the fourth pole made it out. We were real busy catching fish. We had a time keeping up with three. Most of the time we were dealing with fish on two poles at once.

I kept finding myself telling Jake over and over, "this one would be the biggun of the day on my boat". The first real big one came almost immediately after we started fishing. It was 7 pounds even. The next big one weighed 7.6 pounds while the third was the largest at 7.8 pounds.

The 7.8 pounder was pretty cool to witness. We saw a swirl close to the bait, the shad got real nervous and came to the top of the water. Then we saw this mammoth bass inhale it and run. Another reason it was so exciting was that Ryan was using light tackle at the time. Jake was great...he coached Ryan the entire fight till it was in the boat. Jake broke a monster off of 20 pound test at one point. Wish we could have seen that one.

Jake also taught us the proper way to set a hook. I found that we have been way too subtle with our hook sets in the past. Our special thanks go to Jake for taking us on the trip of a lifetime.