Craziest day of Fishing

Today was the best day of fishing in my life and just wanted to share what I learned from it!

A little background, we were fishing a medium large lake in central MN in an inflatable tandem kayak with no electronics except our phones and a topo map printed on paper. I have a Lews classic pro baitcaster on an Ugly Stik and my girlfriend had an old, small Shimano spinning reel on a a new Ugly Stik.

I had resolved to use my jighead swimbait rig because I got skunked using spinner baits my last trip. I was throwing vmc moon eye jig 1/4 ounce with a Rapala Mayor swimbait 3 inch pumpkin disco, (shoutout to hookedupwi for that setup).

We were lucky; the day we planned to fish the pressure rabdomly dropped from 30.41 to 30.12 with no previous forecast, So it was drizziling on and off all day.

I had been reading about structure and an ex pro Randy Blaukat of Intuitive Angling said his favorite structure of all time were points. So I looked up a bunch of points for this fishing trip. On the main lake there was a water current that was definitely noticable as we paddled to our first spot. As I arrived at one of our points on an island I realized the area behind the island was an eddy of still water. You could see the border between the choppy waves and the curved semicircle of still water. There were some overhanging trees, and behind us was a steep drop off to 40 ft deep water (according to topo map. I figured that if it was easy to hang out in the eddy and didn't have to worry about being carried away, the fish would feel the same. I suspected that I had found a productive spot to fish.

All in all I caught 3 largemouths in that area and my gf caught a crappie on a beetle spin and 2 largemouths, including the largest one of the night, on the same swim jig. Unfortunately we both had a couple jump off the hook.

We got all of our bites casting from about 25ft away from the bank to 5 feet away from the bank. mostly near overhanging trees. and rhe bass usually hit the bait very soon after it landed in the water.

I gotta say, it was such a good feeling observing my surroundings and identifying a successful pattern.

Also I have been too scared to thumb bass and I finally did it! I found it easier to do if I grabbed the jig with the pliers before thumbing, that way if the fish wriggled, I wouldn't get stabbed by the hook. After thumbing, I could remove the hook with the pliers, put the pliers down and pose for a quick pic before releasing the fish.

I hope this helps someone!