Landed A Real Goodun This Weekend! W/pics

[Biglerma]

Took my girlfriend down to Shell Knob for the first time this weekend. First morning we got out there at 6 am, pulled up to a point that I have pretty good luck on with top water. My girlfriend is a skilled fisherman but she had not fished a redfin before. So I threw it out and was explaining how to reel it back and WHAM! First cast... keeper LM. After that she was eager to try, so she throws hers out there... fish comes up, swing and a miss! 2nd cast she stuck him, keeper spot. Her first one ever! We ended up catching 5 or 6 more. We had another boat pull up on the point with his wife and he was throwing a fluke and just absolutely hammering the fish. We watched him catch 15 in the time it took us to catch 5. We got to talking and he came over and gave us a few hooks/flukes and we gave it a shot, but let me tell you we couldn't buy a bite on one. He was just catching fish left and right and our boats were no more than a cast apart (which I didn't mind cus we were talking back n forth). We had several follow it and make runs at the bait but no takers. Finally I got discouraged and we left that point and went to throwing the wobble head. I didn't have any luck on it, and it wasn't due to lack of trying! I threw it quite a bit at some of my best spots and no takers.

After an hour of throwing the wobble head I switched to a green pumpkin 3/16 oz shaky head and started catching fish. My girlfriend didn't want to throw the worm, instead she wanted to throw a bright pink worm (girls.. go figure) I said you'll never catch one on that... few casts later she proved me wrong. She threw that for a bit and caught 2-3 more fish, then she wanted to try a chartruese lizard. Again, you'll never catch one on that... and again she proved me wrong catching 3 fish on it! All this time I was also catching fish, but I was just shocked that the bright pink worm and lizard got a few bites. We fished til about noon on Saturday and then went out again that evening but the bite was much slower, only caught 3. I think this was due to the heavy boat traffic.

Day 2 - Sunday - Went back to my top water point, caught some fish. Same guy was there throwing the fluke smashing the fish again. Again we tried, again we failed. I just don't have the touch for those flukes. We threw the shaky head and caught some good fish. We went into Mill Creek (Shell Knob area) and started fishing the docks on the right side. We would catch 2-3 fish per dock and I had one nice one that broke me off on the dock. Caught one 3 lb LM the rest were 1.5-2lb fish.

We were past the docks fishing the bank and I asked her to grab map of the lake out of my dad's tackle box that was under the console. She pulled it up, opened the lid and there I had a ring box open, with the ring shining nice and bright. I took to one knee and asked my best friend to marry me in the same cove that my mother and father had shared so many great memories from before I was born. I landed a real goodun! To this day my folks still tell me fish stories about "mill creek" and all the monster slab crappies they used to catch there.

After that we went back to the house and had lunch. The day got even better from here! We decided to drive up to Flat Creek south of Aurora and go wading. We got there and waded up stream away from the other people. We were throwing silver rooster tails. We must have caught 15 smallmouth with a couple being really nice ones! We would hook one and they would come flying out of the water! Such great little fighters. We caught a few goggle-eye and some sunfish, all fish were released. She had never caught a small mouth or goggle-eye before either.

We came home, my family had some bubbly prepared for a toast. Great end to a great weekend.

Mark Bigler

Click Here for Slide Show - pics were too big to upload here.

http://s852.photobucket.com/user/markbigler/slideshow/

[Lvn2Fish]

What a great post, congrats my man

[Wayne SW/MO]

Good for you.

[REDSOXWSCHAMP]

Congrats!!!! cheers to you and your misses on the journey ahead

[dtrs5kprs]

Good for you, and even better that she said yes. Might have been a quiet day otherwise, and yes or no I sure would not have left biting fish.

[Quillback]

Congrats!

[motoman]

Congrats there Mark! What a great post, and cool way to propose. You did find a good one.......she likes to fish too.......that's fantastic!

[Ham]

Good for you both!

[Fly_Guy]

Well done! Wishing you both many happy years!

[Flysmallie]

That's awesome.