The 3rd day of practice my cousin and I targeted the grass beds just east of Waterloo. I looked at my gps and picked an area that looked good. As soon as we got down off plane, the fish started busting. As far as you could see down the break line there were bass smashing shad. It was unbelieveable! My cousing and I ran all over finding more and more areas like that, and absolutely killed them. I was catching them really good buzzing a skinny dipper across the top. My cousin loves the spinnnerbait and threw that most of the day catching over 20 keepers. I knew with the amount of fish schooling that we wouldn't hurt them by catching a bunch, so we put a serious hurting on them all day long. Last night I said it doesn't get much better than this, well today was even better. The fishing was amazing, and my cousin brought a couple of ribeyes, some potatoes and onions that we cooked on a charcoal grill. We once again ate, drank and were merry.

My cousin was leaving mid morning on the 4th day of practice, so we went out early and tooled around. I pretty much knew what I was going to do down at that end, so when 11am rolled around, I brought my cousin back to the launch and pulled my boat out. I decided to drive up to Florence and fish up at that end of the lake for the rest of the day and the last day of practice. I stopped at the Ranger Support Trailer and talked with Spanky for awhile and then headed out on the lake. By the time I got off the water at 5pm, I had caught almost 16lbs. The fish were all along the riprap and bluff walls. I went down the bank throwing my 4" Berkley hollow belly and a spinnerbait and got bit almost everywhere I stopped. All the species were there; largemouth, smallmouth, and spotted bass.

The fish up at this end were bigger on average, but it wasn't quite as easy as catching the schooling fish down the lake. I was feeling good about my practice. If something happened with my schooling fish, I could always fall back on these fish up here.