Back from Fishing: "Hell-lllooooooww!"

[Mark Hofman]

Okay, I'm back.



Got on the lake on Friday at three. Got off the lake at six. Weather was overcast with a few drizzles and breezy. Forty-eight fish, and a few that decided they didn't want to be lipped (poor hookset).



Saturday morning. Windy, overcast, cold, lake was steaming, ceiling was about 500 feet, alternating drizzle and showers. By noon we had caught 56 largemouths and 2 green sunfish. Nothing over two pounds, but boy did they fight like a p.o.'d smallie! Had one that probably went over two, but I fiddled around with it enjoying the fight and it got off (sorry, Scott, no pics of a rubber fish this time).



Ate lunch and watched a troop of about eight boys fish from the bank for the first time. Two-piece rods came apart, line got tangled, lures in the trees. It was kinda humorous. We finally sucked it up and went down to do some "teachable moments" with them.



Back out on the water at one p.m. By four we had hooked another 52 largemouths, and one green sunfish. Again, not large (some were downright embarrassing to catch) but they did fight like the dickens on 4 lb. test.



Big thunderstorm and tornado warnings on Saturday night. The bilge pump on my boat works just fine. At least for the four minutes it took to pump the water out. Sunday was bright, clear and W-I-N-D-Y. Didn't bother charging the TM battery the night before, so we only fished a couple of hours. Caught four. Then gave up when the TM wouldn't move the boat and the TM prop was spinning about the speed of a second-hand on a cheap watch. I'll post some nice pics of the lake when I get them off the digital camera.



MO

 

[Mark Hofman]

Here's a wide shot of the lake:

 

[Mark Hofman]

At the end of Friday, we parked the boat on a calm lake:

 

[Mark Hofman]

Clouds and storms beginning to roll in from the southwest:

 

[Mark Hofman]

By Sunday, it was clear, but the wind was kicking up. Typical post-cold-front weather:

 

[Mark Hofman]

No fish photos (too small to brag about) but I thought y'all would like to see where I was. This is the same lake that Scott and I were on with the blind scouts two weekends ago. Don't get to go back out here until late September.

 

[Mark Hofman]

The local Boy Scouts of America Council owns 5,700 acres of land near Farmington, MO called the "S-Bar-F Scout Ranch". The lake is called Nims Lake, and its about 270 acres. In the second photo, the white spots on the far shoreline are canoes and rowboats stacked in one of the four main camping areas (this one's called Camp Sakima - pronounced Sah-kee-mah).





You have to be a BSA member to be on the property, and since it's a private lake it gets very little fishing pressure. On Friday and most of Saturday, our boat was the only one on the lake. Our partner boat (BSA has a "rule of two") didn't make it out until late Saturday because they broke a serpantine belt on their van coming down from St. Louis.



So, being the only boat on a fairly undeveloped private lake with the highest bass-per-acre ratio of any lake in the state, is kind of a a fisherman's paradise!