Thursday was full of surprises. I chose to go to Banks on Thursday as it had the best forecast for wind. What a surprise when we arrived to find it blowing a stiff ten-plus miles per hour. Not enough to keep my brother in-law Tom Verschuren and I off the water, though. We launched at Northrup, and I ran down and round the Poplars, where it should be calm. Down went the bow mount to work the rip rap along the highway. Surprise, surprise I had no thrust. No matter what I did with the controls I got no go. While I controlled the boat with the big motor Tom cast to the bank and almost immediately hooked and landed a nice smallmouth. I got one myself a short while later. The wind had died slightly, so we ran across the lake and worked a bank on the far side. We got a few hits, and he landed another smallmouth. We stopped at the Electric Fisherman’s shop in Moses Lake on the way home, and Scott tried to fix the motor while we were there, but he was stumped—had never come across the issue with the motor before. That was an unexpected surprise, too.
Tom Verschuren holds up the first smallmouth he landed while fishing at Banks Lake on Thursday.