She comes out of the early morning haze, sleek, slick and impatient. The engine lopes kind of like that 68 camaro your old neighbor used to have. Lit up front and back. Twenty feet of well engineered machinery. You join all the others in the crowded predawn cove. To your left 2 guys are laughing at one of their buddies tie dye hat. Caffeine from that second cup of coffee mixed with just a slight hint of adrenaline is starting to kick in nicely. Loudspeakers come to life, hats are removed, hands placed over hearts, The National Anthem is played. These guys know every word, not like that dingbat rock star that messed up the words at the super bowl couple years back, these guys know it cause they live it. Much to the bleeding heart liberals chagrine, a prayer is said, if your offended, tough, go fish somewhere else. Engines come to life the air is filled with the smell of a mixture of burned gas and oil mixed with sweat and lake. Your partner pulls up the trolling motor makes sure all rods are fastened down tight. Its fixin to get a little hairy. Number is called, idle out to the buoy. Waves, lots of them as all the previous guys put the hammer down. Bow comes up then settles in neatly, to the task at hand. Rocking around as she breaks through wakes thrown up by the others. Out in the boat lane now, foot to the floor, blip just a little as you cross a boat wake, sorry bud you aint got enough boat today, you think as you go by him. Back at the boat factory theres an engineer sitting at his desk smiling as you are doing exactly what he designed your boat to do. FLY! Less than a foot of your fiberglass rocket is actually hitting the water at any one time. Other boats ahead, but you wont catch them before they turn out of the boat lane. Thats OK cause you know the shortcut. They peel off and cut it down to an idle as they enter the stumps, but not you, pull back a little, trim down a hair, do a 90 between the big oak and the old owl tree. Boats scratching for traction like one of those cheetahs chasing a wildebeast on the animal channel. Through the stumps and out into the field, your partner is white, oops guess you should have told him you were going to do that. He later comments it scared him so bad he was seeing dead relatives. Back of the cove where the nice grass is, shut her down. It will be another ten minutes before the guys idling get here. Heh Heh! First cast, bloop bloop, nothing. Thats Ok its unlucky to catch one on the first cast. You see a couple of shad jump off to your right. Make a long cast, bloop bloop, your lures disapears under what looks like a industrial size toilet flush. A rook would set the hook immediately and completely miss this one, but this aint your first rodeo, you wait 1,2 seconds heart pounding adrenaline out of control, line moving sideways. With a well practice snap of the wrist your lazer sharpened steel embeds itself in the upper jaw of the beast. All hell breaks loose! Drag singing, line running one way then another. She jumps, 21 inches long, 6 inches wide,
and she is pissed. She jumps again, but not as high or hard, shes getting tired. Your partner has recovered from his near death experience through the trees and has the net waiting. Here she comes easy, until she sees the boat, he swats at her with the net and almost knocks her off your line. Straight under the boat she goes as if she knows she can cut your line on the keel. You horse just enough to get her back up in the net. YES! Seven pounds at least. She gets a scenic trip free of charge to your livewell. 8 minutes later one of the idling boats shows up and asks "How big was that fish you caught"? "Just a keeper", you reply. Yeah, your addicted.

you must have the good stuff

Roll it up, lite it up, in hale........ Ex hale.

Reminds of some cypress hill music.

greatness, i was in the boat idling in the stumps cursing my partner, because he didn't know about the shortcut on his home lake.

just run slightly to the left of those PVC poles, watch the sandbar on the right and hammer down!

it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I caught a delicious bass.

Not bad....

This is what happens at 1 in the morning on a Monday.

Great read.

Nice

Guys who were idling: "He must be new or have really good insurance."

I slide a little wide in the timber and there goes the lower unit tumbling all the way atop the water like a skipping stone to the bank

Good read!

Thanks guys

Was daydreaming late at night.