OMG! "Was It Jaws?"

[Lee Borgersen]

       OMG! "Was It Jaws?"

  ....
On our recent trip to the BWCA I decided to dedicate my efforts towards one morning of fishing smallies. I've got a spot that we call "The Charlie Bar". This spot has produced some of best size smallmouth I've ever seen. As usual I throw out a marker buoy near the spot on the spot. I can usually tell when the smallmouth are there as the depth finder shows thin lines shooting all over the screen from the bottom of 30 to the 20 ft. depth. That means their chasing food.

  ...
I dropped my rig in with one of my conditioned crawlers and slowly back trolled. "Badda bing badda bang" fish on! A great  had begun. I almost did as much back reeling as forward reeling as the smallie decided to race to the surface. I dipped my rod to prevent her breaking the surface to no avail. With 6# test and a tiny #8 Mustad hook I couldn't risk Apling to much pressure.

  .....
Nice Fish! She dove back down and headed in the direction of my marker. All of a sudden the line stopped moving but, was taught. My worst nightmare now . I looked up to da sky and asked for some help. I started up the electric and slowly moved towards the buoy with hopes of salvaging my trophy. OMG! The buoy started to submerge and move slowly hanging just below the surface. That means only one thing. That bass is still on! I grabbed the net and scooped up the buoy.

As I got hold of the marker line I could feel jerking resistance so the fish was there and I figured it would break the fishing line an be gone. As fate would have it I was half right. You see the bass was long gone. I wound up with a freakin pike with the marker line all tangled in his teeth and snout along with the net string when I scooped him up.

  ......
It took me forever to untangle this mess without cutting my Beckman net or marker string. Then I was worried about a warden showing up and thinking I was jug fishing with the marker line in the pikes mouth. I released the pike after him spending a long time in dry dock and he swam along on the surface for a good 15 min before he could submerge. Sure enough here comes a boat with 2  officers. It was just the forest service guys checking permits.

I'll be back next year and fishing The Charlie Bar once again and hope to meet up with OL uncle smallie who kicked my

      "And Now You Know The Rest Of The Story"

Side Note:
The name "Charlie Bar" was given to that spot because years ago when our boys were small they lost so many large fish on that spot. So, thinking it was always one same big fish each year they gave it the name Charlie. Thus it was named "The Charlie Bar"