ShawnLittle  05/13/2005 - 09:03  Loch Raven    Went out with a friend (Pat) who hasn't been fishing in over a year to my favorite place this time of year: Loch Raven Resovoir. As usual the place was a tad windy, but we were on the fish anyway. My friend picked up like he had been fishing everyday this year, he landed 21 fish (though 2 of them were bluegill which he insists counts just as much as any other fish). Decent fish, nothing to brag about most of his fish were 15" pickerel but he did get 2 of the biggest crappie I have ever seen in back to back casts. (Pictures forthcoming) He also got an excellent largemouth which was nice to see since it seemed like everytime he got a fish it was a pickerel. I believe his total was 2 bluegill, 2 crappie, 12 pickerel, 5 largemouth. All of his fish were caught on the same friggin spinnerbait. He never tied another lure. He lost a couple of them but had enough backups to keep fishing with them. I got a paltry 13 fish as my total but for some reason I was getting more largemouth than pickerel as I got 9 Largemouth and 4 pickerel. (Picture of my largest fish forthcoming.) Now for the drama............. We rented a trolling motor from the fishing center and everything was fine until about 2:00 when I happened to notice the motor sputtering. Uh Oh, I know the signs of an engine about to quit, I've been driving junkers since I was 16 so I feel that I'm pretty much an expert on the signs of a dying motor. I tell my friend Pat the problem and suggests we should start heading back towards the fishing center that way if it does die than we don't have far to row. I say that would be great but it just sputtered out on us and we're not going anywhere. He takes a look at the motor, gives it a shot on top of the motor and it starts up like nothing was ever wrong. I was like awesome and being that we were tearing up I suggested we keep fishing but fish our way back to the center. Well, that little tap on the engine lasted about 3 minutes cause the motor started sputtering again. At this point he was the captain and he was saying we should start heading back. I agreed because we were really far away from the fishing center and it was a long way to row. So we proceed on out of the cove and that's when we realized....Man we are in trouble. The wind was pushing us backwards because our sputtering motor wasn't giving us enough thrust to head into it. Pat started smashing the top of the motor with an oar and it would start up again, then a minute later it would die, then he would smash it again and the motor would die about 45 seconds later, then he smashed it again and then the motor lasted 30 seconds and so on. After about 45 minutes we made it a 100 yards and I would say that the fishing center is at least a mile away probably more. Not a chance we could row against the wind and make it, we were going to be stranded on an island. Well, we decide that we'll give a the fishing center a call and see if we can get a tow back into shore because they have the only motorboat allowed on the resovoir. Sure enough we call them, they ask us where we are and said they'll be out in 5 minutes. 5 minutes later, a guy comes out in a motorboat asks if we could do him a favor and undo the trolling motor. Pat unhooks the trolling motor from the boat and gives it to the guy and then to my amazement the guy gives us back a fresh trolling motor and after he makes sure it works he drives away. Of course what do we do, we tie our lures back on and hit the next available cove to catch more fish. This year it seems like I've had this run of luck on the resovoir, I'm hoping it stops there because it is getting that time of year where I launch the canoe into Monocacy and I def. do not want any drama while I'm in a canoe on a river........

Total score yesterday Team Good 34 Loch Raven 6 (5 lures and a rental trolling motor). One lure really hurt me though, it was a $10 dollar spinnerbait and sure enough it was a spinnerbait that fit right into the pattern that the fish were on.