I was out fishing a few weeks ago for catfish. I had thrown out an anchor and started throwing out some jug lines around the boat. We had only been sitting there about 15 minutes when one of the jugs started going crazy. It was completely submerging and popping out of the water. The line was about 30 feet from the boat. I didn't want to start my outboard (200hp) and scare all the fish. So I attempted to use the trolling motor, it didn't work. I looked around and did the only thing that I could think of. I did the biggest belly flop of my life into the lake after the jug. I swam over and grabbed it, I overestimated my swimming ability to the fish. I thought that I would easily be able to pull it back to the boat. The fish had other ideas. After a couple of minute fight in the water, I got it in the boat. I was a five pound large mouth bass, on a jug line? The only bad thing is that my fishing buddy witnessed the whole thing. It turns out that the reason that my trolling motor didn't work because it wasn't plugged into the switch panel. My friend laughed for about half an hour. The worst part is that my fishing buddy works with me and told everybody the real story about what happened. He asked me what on earth I was thinking. I told him that I didn't want to scare the fish. He told me that my belly flop scared the fish a lot more that any outboard could have. The biggest bass of my life and I had to catch it like that.
