Well, I finally broke the 20" mark. I must say I never thought it would happen. I've be *this* close so many times with 19"+ fish, and when this fish took my jerk bait I thought for sure I was going to come up short again. Then it happened, the fish took off towards the back of the boat and my line crossed with one of the Capt's rods that were leaning on the transom. "Great", I thought to myself. "I'm going to lose this fish." But as always, the Capt was cool and took care of it. He netted her and then said, "This might be it, Mike." And it was. 20" on the mark.

Overall, it was a real tough bite that day. We had to work hard for those fish, and found some in deep water and some in staging areas. We caught some on jerk baits, and some on plastics. I think the Capt caught a fish on every bait he threw except the inline spinner.

Here are a couple more pics of the fish we caught that day:

I'll post on the other drama of my weekend a bit later.
-Mike