Morning bass fun

With the kids in camp this week I have time to get out early and try my luck.  Took the 8wt and 2 baitcaster's.  Left at 4am and drove an hour north toward a lake known for holding huge bass.  It's a smallish lake around 1300 acres and get's a lot of fishing pressure so it can be a tough bite at times.

Big fish, ~5lbs and ~20".

Last yr I lost the largest bass I have ever seen (easily over 10lbs and it was witnessed) when it wrapped me around a tree and made a dive leaving me sick to my stomach as I watched it swim away.  My goal this trip was to catch a monster bass on a fly.  Spoiler...it didn't happen.  Seems like bass in my area have transitioned to summer patterns.  I threw the fly for the better part of 2 hours without any interest...away it went.  As the sun got high I could hear fish schooling and knew I could catch a few on small swimbaits (wish I hadn't put the fly rod away).  So I chased the schools for an hour and caught 3-4 small 1-2lb bass.  Now that I've put a few fish in the yak I wanted to target some big LM bass so I worked the lilly pads with a large worm targeting 6-7 fow.  At around 10am I got a solid thump and pulled this 4.5/5lb'r out of the pads.  It was a great fight, he ran back into the pads and wrapped me several times.  I love the feeling of reaching into salad and pulling out a solid fish.

(Cuda 12 hatch) From the top buckle to the end of the hatch is 20 inch's.

That was the best fish of the day.  I ended up catching 6, mostly 1-2lb bass.  Not a bad day but 3/4lb bass are the average size at this lake.  So I sum it up as slightly above average trip.  But no complaints b/c I was on the water and that's where I want to be.

Most bass were this size.