Good local midnight bassin'

[logs22]

While my plan was to head to the Raritan to try for some smallies last night life intervened and I instead ended up at the local pond on a combined Dogwalk/fishing excursion. Despite fishing this pond more than anywhere else it rarely produces for me, but when it does it is usually a nice sized fish. Last night was no exception. Grabbed the dog and walked over to park around 11 with two poles and the last beer from the fridge. I had a weedless topwater frog on one pole since that is probably the most abundant food source at this place and on the other pole I put on a Texas rigged superfluke jerk bait with a 1/8 bullet sinker. I have never had much luck with soft plastic jerk baits though so I hedged my bets by using a snap leader so I could swap out lures if necessary (I rarely ever use leaders with soft plastics). I had a couple topwater blowups on the frog but the damn fish kept missing so I switched to the fluke. I am glad I did, within minutes I snagged this nice LMB, possibly the longest Largie I have caught and maybe even a PB in weight as well. If the girth of this fish had matched the length it would have been a PB for sure. I estimate 18-19". I ended up getting a little wet on the release because the shoreline was thick with vegetation and I wanted to make sure this fella made it safely back into deeper waters (so I can hopefully catch him again after he fills out).

As you can see from one of the pics, my dog was not at all impressed with my catch, although it scared the hell out of him when I pulled the thing onto the bank and it flopped right onto him!