Last Day for me

[Bender]

Well after trying to launch yesterday only to find the ramps frozen I asked around and found one inland lake that still was all open water. We went there this morning and it was cold, 13 degrees! No fish either, there was about 20-22' visibility in the lake as well. After 3 hours of that crap we decided to take our chances on the "hot pond" on Erie. The normal launch was frozen solid yesterday so we launched up a river to get out. The water is really shallow getting into this warm water discharge so you have to go pretty fast and stay on plane to get in. Also you have to know where you re going, which I didn't 100%. When you are running around 40 and the deepest you have seen for 1/2 mile is 3', it is skinny. My prop hit a little when it got under a foot but we made it through. I planned on sending that one in for work over the winter anyway.
As soon as we got in there we started snagging shad and carp. These shad average about 8-12" long. These things are loaded up so much in there that your crankbait hits them all the time.



Finally we got into some bass, but not many with size. We worked our way around and ended up at a spot I fished last week. We started off with small bass, then a couple nicer ones, then the sheephead (drum) moved in, then catfish, then my buddy hooked this monster fish! He fought it for at least 10 minutes on 8 pound line and a spinning reel. It weighed in right at 20 pounds. By this time it was getting pretty dark so we headed home with a successful last trip of the year.
Here's my best bass, 3 1/2#:


The carp:




And let me see if this video works of us trying to get out to the lake: