Date	Temp	Water temp	Pressure	Solunar	Conditions
10/5/2021	72°	60°	29.92	Excellent 5a-7a	Intermittent Showers

My little fishing buddy and I went fishing on our normal Tuesday morning trip last week. It was an excellent day by Solunar measurement and the weather was perfect. We got to Evelyn Hallman pond at 6am, I threw a line in with a #6 hook with hot dog soaked in blood while unpacking the camp and within seconds a catfish hit the line. I pulled in a 1.75 lb, 15″ channel catfish, but it dropped off the line right on the shoreline.

Around 1.5 hrs later, I had both lines in the water, one with a #6 hook with hot dog soaked in blood, another with a #4 octopus hook with shrimp. We were just waiting for some action, he was just resting his eyes for a minute.

Suddenly around 7:40am the left line had a big hit. The one with the shrimp on it. He put up a big fight as I brought him in, got him to shore and used the net to ensure he didn’t get away. He was roughly 22″ and 4.38lb. (Disclaimer: in the video I call out he’s 2 pounds. Inadvertently the scale was set to kg. I have it set properly now as of 10/20/2021). While bringing him in he crossed over by right line and got tangled in it. I worked fast to get him untangled by cutting the lines and noticed his left fin was caught in the net. I cut the net around his fin (my brand new folding net, by the way), and with the fish fully free wanted to get him in the water to resuscitate him. I used lip grippers and placed him in the water and moved him forward and back to get water moving over his gills.

Suddenly he thrashed just right and knocked the lip grippers out of my hand! Foolishly, I didn’t have a line tied around my wrist to secure the lip grippers, but he was lurking near the shoreline. So I grabbed my net and tried trapping him. He ducked below it and ran!

So, if anyone wants a free pair of lip grippers with built in scale and tape measure, stop by Evelyn Hallman pond sometime and see if the fish shook the lip grippers free. They’ll most likely float to shore somewhere.

Here’s the side-by-side video of the event