June 23rd trip report

weather- partially cloudy, no rain .wind calm in the morning and speeding up around 9 am to 10-20mph out of the east north east, trade winds.
barometer 30.08 and rising.
68% humidity
waxing crescent moon with a 51 out of 100 on the astro tables.
water temp was 79 at launch with a hight of 81 by 11 o clock am
water clarity was 2-3ft  along the south basin with better than 4 ft in the main basin.
water level at dam was 69.60ft

well the trip started out with such promise, we had made a fish house, a structure of a plastic pallet and 1/2 water line cut into various lengths. and we were gonna deploy it and see if we can start working on getting south fork back to its heyday by adding good structure in some areas. we arrived at the ramp at 6 30 am and were the 4th boat to be in line to launch. it looked to be a busy day on the water. we had to nose in at the tip of the ramp as the side had another boat loading up and  there was already another boat behind us waiting to launch. got my son life jacketed up and started to put him on the boat but I'm not sure what happened if he pushed the boat as i set him down or if it just pulled away or what but i was soon extended full arms length with the choice of stepping off the dock and landing him on the boat dry or dropping him in the drink and saving myself. of course i took the first option without a thought........ unfortunately i had my wallet and iPhone in my pocket. stepped off and straight to the bottom into 8ft of water. bounced up and grabbed the gunnel and hauled myself in in one fluid movement. i couldn't have been submerged but 2-3 seconds tops but i opened my pocket and the iPhone was dark...... not a good way to start the trip, not to mention the air was a bit nippy that early and i was completely soaked. all in all i wasn't about to let it ruin my  trip, of course as i looked down at my phone that was hard to do, after all its a company phone and i didn't relish buying a replacement at 300-400$ or explaining to the office manager  what had happened. we headed up into south fork to deploy our "fish house" and decided the lone island that becomes a underwater hump when the water is high would be a good spot. set it just below the surface  figuring with the rising water it would be in 6ft of water most of the time and 2 ft at low water. the plan of having water fill the plastic pallet and carry it down didn't work so well. ended up using rocks from the island and put them in the indentations to weight it down and get it to stay on the bottom. luckily i was already wet so the swim to get the house down wasn't a problem. we got it set and headed back down to robbies tree to start our fishing day. of course i don't have any pics seeing as my phone was dead, i really wanted to get a few of our fish house. honestly i have kinda forgotten most of the details on the trip i was pretty bummed and i think my son was feeding of that because i mostly remember him being fussy and me worrying because i couldn't contact mommy to come get him so i knew id be leaving early to get him home. we managed 3 fish in the 1-1.5 lb range. I'm thinking one was on a crankbait. one on a plastic worm texas rigged. one was on a devils horse. i honestly am not 100% sure but i do know we were done by 11 am  and headed back in. its good that they went biting because id have been more miserable leaving with a bite going on. still 3 fish and got home in time to do chores, guess there was some good out of it. this 2 weeks to finish reports sure makes it tough to remember the details. i really got to get up on keeping this more current. will have to report on how i saved the phone in a later blog ;)