On the 16th I had Rafael and Phil out. We fished hard and played hard also. Rafael caught his first Chip muskie after he took his bait out of the water and Phil saw that a fish was down there trying to eat his bait. Twice the fish took swipes at Rafael's bait while it was dangling out of the water. Once Rafael put the bait back into the water the fish ate it. And then the celebration began. At one point while fighting the fish there was a "how you like me now Joe Bucher" comment screamed across the lake. Priceless! We had one other really big fish follow while Rafael was doing his walking figure eight down the side of the boat. I would have liked to see what would have happened had he done a good figure eight but at that point nothing seemed to matter. The one he did get was a 38 incher. Way to go Rafael.

Yesterday I had a four hour trip with David and he had one wake up on a Pacemaker and right when I said to speed it up the fish ate it and he ripped it out of the fish's mouth before the fish got to the bait. That was his first topwater hit. Sometimes you learn the hard way. That looked like a pretty good fish. That was the only fish we saw all morning. It looked like a good morning. Might have just been bad timing on spots. I'm guessing there were some fish caught yesterday morning. Rachel and I went out for a few hours before dark and caught a 38 incher. That one was also in the figure eight. For those that are out here, the fish are hitting topwater bucktails and everything else in the figure eight so you might want to do one or two. My buddy caught one last night after what he said felt like five minutes of figure eights. He said it hit five times before he finally caught it. Crazy!

Water temps were 62 degrees