After getting skunked over at Beaver yesterday, I decided to take the day off from work and head out to Lake Tye up in Monroe.

I arrived at the lake at around 1030 and came prepared this time with my two-pole endorsement. The sun was out and the temperature was comfortabe, little did I know it would get downright warm come later in the afternoon.

I walked half way around the lake and then settled on setting up on the west side just up a bit from the southwest corner. There are numerous spots on the shores of this lake that are perfect for setting up a chair and have clean-cut access to casting pretty much anywhere.

There were remnants of chartreuse bait balls all around my feet, I figured that was a good sign.

I initially set-up one rod with a bass sinker and an 8" leader rigged with 2 balls of floating orange powerbait. The second rod was my "Action" rod so I set it up with a small brown rooster-tail spinner and a few split-shot for casting. About a half-hour in and suddenly the slack line on the powerbait rod begins to track out to the water. At the time I was actively retrieving my spinner and decided to just toss it down, and then slowly pick up the baited rod. FISH ON!

Loop-ily coming out of the water was a lazy and tired feeling 12" Trout. At first I thought it might have been a catfish or a big crappie by the way it wasn't fighting. That must have been the most tired trout I have ever caught because he literally gave up and had very little fight in him. It was probably about 15 seconds between the hook-set and when I dragged him up on the beach, not only that but he really didn't try to escape or flop around either as I was removing the hook.

For the next 3 or 4 hours there was very little action. At one time I switched both rods to powerbait and bass sinkers. I even tried a longer leader (20 inches) on one rod and kept the shorter leader on the other. During that time I had two soft misses on the short leader powerbait and none on the long leader.

The sun started coming on full force during the late-afternoon and I was beginning to feel it on my arms and my face. I figured that I was already bright red and burnt, what's another few hours going to hurt? More joggers and families began appearing on the walkway around the lake, and all in all it felt like a great afternoon.

Around 3pm I decided to switch it up again and rigged one of the rods with a small silver-only Dick-Nite spoon with a couple of split-shots mounted up the line about 18" for casting weight. 10 minutes later and BANG. I guess the thing about retrieving spoons or spinners that always gets me, is when the fish initially hits the lure. It always is surprisingly startling even though we think we're expecting it. This trout definitely had a lot more fight in it, he even went airborne several times and reminded me of fighting a small Coho. This was a great fish and was great fun catching it. Of the three this was the fish of the day, coming it at around 14".

About an hour later I landed a 3rd fish - also on the tiny silver Dick-Nite spoon, it was a little bigger than the 1st but not as big as the 2nd. This fish also put up a good fight and couldn't stop jumping out of the water while trying to throw the hook.

A man stopped to chat with me as I was packing up for the evening. He pointed out to me that I was really really sunburnt, and I stopped and took off my sunglasses to have a look. Admittedly I was bright red all over my arms and my face. I could feel the burning pain on my forearms, cheeks, and forehead, but could only really muster a big grin as I flipped open the lid to my cooler and I responded to him "It was a really great day to get a sunburn".

tight lines!

(sorry about the fish pics, I was excited and cleaned them up before their photo-shoot)

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