A new personal best on toledo! (Speed or Fish?)

I have not fished there in so long. Somewhere early in its development, after the dam was completed and everything had flooded, a friend of mine invited me to go to the bend to fish. He had a friend that owned land that originally extended into the impoundment area, and he had told my friend that he was seeing some huge bass spawning on the flats his land had contributed to. We drove down there, launched a 20 aluminum jon boat by hand, and jumped into a trip to remember. As we slowly poled out into this flat, any sort of noise or movement would create dozens of mud trails in the water, often with giant wakes and even splashes. We started off with some of them (at the time) new-fangled plastic worms. Watched a huge female pick the thing up, swim away about 6 feet, and drop it away from the bed. At this point, we were pretty frustrated with this. I whipped out a new lure I had bought at our local hardware store, something called a “Rapala”. Skinny floating lure with a couple of treble hooks. Threw that thing beyond the bed and retrieved it and WHAM. First fish was 14 pounds 2 ounces. Later that morning, I caught my (still) personal best of 14-6. My friend caught three over 10 pounds. The rapala was pure gold. Pretty new, and I can only presume none were used around those fish.Didnt know much about fishing back then, so we tried everything. Topwater with lucky 13, jitterbug, crazy-crawler, devil horse, Heddon pop-R and such. Nada. Dont remember any clothes-pin type spinners back then, everything I had was inline. Apparently about as interesting as a dog turd to a bedding bass. But the rapala. Seemed to infuriate the fish. Perhaps mimicking something that was raiding their nests. The place we were fishing was huge. Had several small creeks meandering through it, shallow flats everywhere but deep water reasonably close. Only down-side was that this was somewhere in the late 60s, maybe very early 70s, so interstates were splotchy. No completed I-59 / I/10 to get over toward the La/Tx impoundment, so the trip was miserable, going through about 500 small towns, taking forever. So it was not a trip we were going to be doing while going to college, etc. As a result, I have never been back but it is on my “bucket list”.In thinking back, I believe that 14-2 fish was caught on a lure called the “dillinger”. This was almost like a super-sized devil horse. Long torpedo shape, prop on one end (maybe both, too long ago to remember). Only claim to fame was it had FIVE treble hooks. The local hardware store owner gave it to me when he heard about our planned trip. Told me “I cant sell this as it is illegal in mississippi due to the 5 treble hooks, so see if you have any luck. I remember heaving that thing and it was HEAVY. Thought I was going to throw it into the next Parrish. When it hit, it was stuck. Thought “Dang, first thing I catch is a stump”. But as I pulled, the stump seemed to move. Then was convinced it was a log rather than a stump. Continued pulling slowly and after about 60 seconds, suddenly the log developed a motor and really started pulling. Finally landed the fish, and released it (we were catch and release before most knew how to spell it. ). Never caught another fish on the thing so I must have hit right in the face of the female on the bed and the size demanded a reaction. Most everything else I caught (both of us, actually) was on the simple rapala lure (we did not have any of the jointed versions that we saw later on).I had an opportunity to fish a smaller impoundment when it first opened up to public fishing, and that rapala won the day for me there as well. Have not used one in 30 years now I dont think, have to give one a try just to see.Dont know what the bend looks like today. Back then it had lots of standing timber. I would imagine most of that has fallen over, and the stumps are now probably below the water surface, as we see on Lay. 20=30 years ago on Lay there were stump fields everywhere with the stumps 2-3 above the surface of the water. Very few are visible today but they are still there waiting to snatch lower units. Will add, that time changes everything. My son was looking at our LakeMaster map of lay lake and down-river from beeswax (about 12 miles in fact) he found a notation of “submerged house.” Said we HAD to go see that and see what it looks like on down-imaging / side-imaging. He was envisioning a house, porch, etc. What we found was a small hump of sludge. The lake was impounded (Lay) about a hundred years ago. A house under water is not going to look exactly like a house after all the nails have devolved to rust and all the wood has rotted. Anti-climatic to say the least. Fortunately there are railroad trestles scattered around and you can see each cross-tie clearly (rails were apparently removed before flooding since they were a lot of steel).Last edited by oldtimer57 on July 24th, 2017, 4:06 am, edited 1 time in total.2008 Pantera Classic2014 Mercury Pro XS 200