Getting Lucky

Every once in awhile it's nice to get lucky. Over the years I have caught several bass with flies. They have always been fun to catch but I always wanted to catch the size of fish that was the norm with spinning gear. My buddy has access to a private lake and invited me to join him. Some of the bass were bedding and you could see splashes near shore from fish busting shad. The conditions were ripe for a good day. I missed a few fish using a small popper. I saw some bass herding shad so I decided to tie on a gulley fish. On my third cast near shore I hooked this guy.The fish was a pretty good size but it didn't put up much of a fight. It ran a couple times close to shore and just kind of gave up after about 20 seconds. I did put a lot of pressure on it but I still felt it tuckered out rather quickly. My buddy hooked something that doubled his rod over. I ran over to help him land it and as I got closer I realized it was a snapping turtle. It was enormous and not happy. My friend had hooked it in the rear foot.As we were trying to figure out what to do the hook straightened out and the turtle was gone. That was probably for the best. There was no way either of us were messing with that thing. The bite slowed down and I had several up and close refusals. The fish really inspected the fly and almost got close enough to nudge it with their nose. I switched to a rabbit fur fly that I tied awhile ago. It's just a olive and black zonker strip with dumbbell eyes. After a few casts I hooked another good bass. This fish had more fight in it but it came to hand pretty quickly.I think it liked the fly.I missed a couple more fish and had to call it a day. It was by far my most successful day bass fishing in just an hour. I had my shots at several big fish and I was glad to get something that would give the 8wt a good bend. It will be fun to hit this lake again. Next time I'm going to target the carp that are large enough to ride.