Today I promised to take my wife and dog fishing. Weather has been comfortable and the fish have been cooperating. Wasn't so much concerned about my wife but the dog had me concerned. She is a great house dog and a beautiful choc. lab weighing 90 lb. When she gets outside or even suspects she is going outside she gets very excited and hard to control. She's just a teenager (3 yrs)! I have always wanted a good fishing dog so with my wife along thought it was time to start getting her out. What a mistake. Before I could even wet a line I was ready to pull the boat out and go home.
Thought I would make it a little easier on my self, so I bought 5 dz jumbo minnows ($54.00!!!). Figured it might get expensive teaching my wife how to deep fish artificial.

We hit most of my usual spots. I tried to keep the boat in 30 ft of water. I know a lot of guys are hitting the 50 to 60 ft depths but I have found the active fish are holding at about 25 ft.

Best 2 spots today:
1.left hand side of lake after the narrows where first bay starts, rocky shoreline
2.in front of spillway (right below log barrier which is sitting on shore due to low water.)

We used simple outfits, spinning reels with 8# and 6 ft Fenwick rods. A hook, minnow and split shot was all that we used. We would try to bounce the bait right off the bottom. All day long I only graphed fish 2 times and they were solitary fish (no schools) hugging no more than 3 ft off the bottom.
The bites were mixed. 1/2 were aggressive and very noticeable (hard to miss all that line ripping off an open spinning reel) and the other 1/2 were just a slight sensation of weight on the line (like some weeds were picked up).

Between the 2 of us we landed 16 or 17 bass (lost count). 3 were smallies in the 2 to 2.5 lb range. 2 largies about 1.5 and the rest were solid 2.5 to 3 lb fish. The wife's largest weighed just over 4 lb. My largest for the day was a beautiful and FAT 5.25. The fish were all large and healthy and put up a great fight. Only 2 fish broke water and the rest stayed deep.

We had several hits that we lost (dog in the way, helping wife with a tangle, etc). In fact I lost 5 in a row (2 the hook came off ( better practice my knot tying!), 2 wrapped in trees and 1 came off 5 ft under the boat. We also missed several fish on the hook sets. The minnows were probably too large and we should have let them feed some more. We wound up using all the minnows but 6.