The cats are still here

It was a beautiful night on the 10K acre Lake Mendota. Not a cloud in the sky. Meteors shooting every couple minutes. A band at the Union a mile away from where I was drifted the blues on the breeze. The fish didn’t seem to want to cooperate. I didn’t get my first bite until 11. I am normally on my way home at 10:00 if I don’t have a bite by then. The fish dove straight for the weeds and circled around a bunch of them. You don’t want to horse them out because you never know how big they are. after a while it came out by itself and it was around 7lbs which is average here. The bite has been a little tougher around here and this fish told me why. It’s belly was so full of something it looked like it couldn’t possibly eat another thing. A few minutes later another bobber disappeared. Looked like the same fish but no hook wound. I usually get fish in groups when they are biting so I rebaited and back out. Midnight comes and we have company in town the next day so I start getting ready to hit the trail. I look up bobber is down. Hook set.. weight… attitude….swimming toward the boat because it wants to…. sign of good fish…. Goes right under the boat and hits the bottom of my rig hard….Never had one do that before… Couldnt turn her…Arg into the anchor rope.. Swam out by itself… around the boat taking drag the whole way….. into one other line….into the other line… Finally tired and swam to the net… I have a 3 rod knot and a nice 28 inch channel… It fought like a 30 but was probably around 15lbs. I didn’t take the time to weigh her because I had to take my own picture and didn’t want her out of the water too long. Fat bottom girl.