What I did on my Memorial Day trip: from the back stock pond on the "new" ranch. Karl "Captain Obvious" Rivas and John "Meat Man" Little pulled more fish out of the pond than I did, but I caught the biggest bass of them all. Big fish tend to be smart fish, and this guy was no different. I was paddling in and decided to make my last cast of the day, into some structure near the shadow line on the western end of the pond. Cast a "plastic perch" lure into the shadows and started dragging, and it hit almost immediately. There's a lot of moss in the pond that's a long, grassy sort, and sometimes if you let your lure drag too deep you would pick some up. But as I started to pull up this cast, it seemed like I had snagged on something solid, like an underwater tree stump. I reeled in, and the drag on the line actually pulled my kayak to where the lure was stuck. I could see that I had a lot of moss on the lure, but couldn't figure out how I could've gotten that deep that fast to get that clogged up, and besides, it felt like something had hit my line seconds after the lure hit the water. I kept a steady drag on the line (it was one of the Captain's poles, and I didn't have any idea what test the line was and didn't want to break it and lose his lure), and the moss slowly started working its way to the top. As the 30 pound glob of moss got close to the surface, I could see the shimmerings of a fish in the middle of it, and a big one at that. I knew I'd break the line if I tried to land fish and moss at once, so I rowed to shore, "Old Man and the Sea" style, and got the Captain and Meat Man to drag him up. I cleared the moss away once he was safely in the shallows, Karl grabbed the digital camera, and there you have it. John (who landed him and got the lure out of his gills - he had really swallowed it) called it at 6 pounds. From a kayak, he seemed like 10. The good news, of course, is that he's back in that tank, probably a little smarter for the hook scars in his throat.