 It's another hot, sweltering day in Texas. I always suggest you hydrate, wail today, and put your sunscreen on, because it's going to be a doozy. I'm not even supposed to be here right now with you, my little cluckers. I'm supposed to be in the crisp, boundary waters, almost in the Canadian crisp air. You can smell it, you can feel it right now. So many big, brown fish, and then the virus took it all away. Today's video, Fish Free, sponsored by Mr. Cat Box. Let's go. Oh, yes, y'all. This month marks eight years of Mystery Tackle Box sending out Tackle Bundles of Joy to your doorstep. Congrats, MTV. And if you want to join the thousands of other danglers that get these boxes every month, it's easy to do. MTV is perfect for the beginning angler, trying to learn new tactics and new lures. And it's great for the experience. Angler putting a bunch of great tackle in a box and bundling it to save you money. Go to MysteryTackleBox.com. Shop the different boxes and the different plans. Don't forget to enter the promo code MONDO when you check out. When you do that, they're going to slap $10 off your first box and every box ships free. Just check out the Juicies in this month's box, like the Biospawn ExoPod for flipping and pitching. The Excite Bates Raptor Tail Junior. A boatload of crankbaits from Bagley, Castaic, Yozuri, and Lunkerhunt. And a roadrunner classic runner for those open-mourner suspended toughies. So go click that link in the top of the description and get signed up today. Now back to our sad story. Yes, my friends. It was going to be quite glorious week. I'm not even supposed to be here right now. I had a two-week trip planned to go up and fish St. Lawrence River to go up to Champlain, a lake I've never been to. It's been on my path. Never been to. It's been on my bucket list for about five years. Got the flights booked, making all the arrangements. We get to a few days before we're supposed to leave. We start poking around the internet, just making sure, you know, there's no special regulations or anything going on in these states that we're going to be traveling through. And lo and behold, there he is. According to these rules, if you're from Texas and you step off that airplane, you're supposed to quarantine for 14 days. Airbnbs around the areas will ask you to quarantine before you even get to their place. Then we're talking boundary waters. You cannot cross the boundary lines right now. Let's say you're fishing the Great Lakes and you go across into Canadian waters. That is no pass, go. Cannot go up there. And you don't want to be fishing up there for them brownfish all puckered up. You want to be, whoo! You know what I'm saying. Loosey goosey, ready to fight those little mouthy brown butterballs. We filmed Unthaught with me, Matt, Jeremy, that great northern dangle. We said, we're coming back. We got to come back here. And it was Matt's birthday at that time. And it was going to be my birthday at this time. And I was like, we got to go up to Champlain area and fish these other places. And we had it all set, playing. But the virus stopped all that. And a glimmer of silk. Fishing freaks on the road. Anyways, and a glimmer of silver lining. It has been a good thing that I've been here for the last few days. I've been taking care of our daughter. I mean, she has been sick. Nobody worry. It's not corona. It's something else. A number of these thousands of other viruses that are out there. But she did get checked. No one's got it. So nobody worry. Stephanie was gone over the weekend. And she got sick. And then I was taken care of her. You know, normally I upload at least one video on the weekends. But I was taking care of her sick baby. I apologize. But baby's come first. Life throws curveballs. Everybody knows that. But I'm here this week. And I'm like, what can I do? What can I do? Interesting. And I found a lake. I found a lake within two hours from where I live that I've never been to. So this is going to be our little sense of adventure. It was supposed to be Champlain. It was supposed to be St. Lawrence River. It was supposed to be the Great Lakes and more. But we're stuck here in Texas. So let's go discover a brand new lake. What am I going to be fishing today, ladies and gentlemen? Grass, grass and more grass is what it looks like. First of all, let me say I feel like I've gone into a Texas time traveling machine coming out here, driving through Cactus and Scrub Oaks for many, many miles. And finally, stumbled across this lake. I wasn't sure if it was even going to have a ramp or anything. It was just one of those kind of deals. It's not a huge, huge lake. My gosh, I'm 30 feet of water right here. My feet opening in the grass. Rocks. I see fish on the rocks. Can you guys see this? Maybe not. Fish on the rocks. Big, deep trees. Suspended bass right here. The glare is going to be hard. I know it's sun. The water does look clear because of all the grass. It looks like there's coontail. There's matted hydrilla. Oh, this is beautiful. This is a little tasty. And we got trees. My gosh. Everything you need for a bass to live in. All right. Here we go now. Let's see what we got. OK. I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm just excited because this is a brand new lake. So many unknowns. Beautiful grass. Beautiful grass. I want to see if I can see any bluegill chasing my popper around. That's going to be a good signal for me. I think we're going to be going plastics. Maybe top waters at certain areas. Maybe they could school out here. OK. Now I can literally see the grass below me here. So we're going to see. We're over deep hydrilla beds. It makes me think there are some active feeders. So I'm moving bait. Should do OK here. It's so clear. OK. Got our first little chaser. I think it was a small bass. Oh. There's a bump. OK. Definitely just got whacked there. There's a group of schooling. It looks like a small group of bass. You can see the school of fish chasing those shad. Look at the shad freaking out. Nuts. Apologize. The GoPro is frozen still. It's like overheated or something. I was talking to you all for about a minute because I got a fish in one of these huge-ass trees down here. And for the first time ever, I could see the fish fighting like 10 feet down and I was able to wrangle them out of there. Not a big one, but sign of life. Mondo worm coming to the rescue here for a first bite. Just look how clear this water is, y'all. Watch this fish. Going down there into the trees, into the deeps. I'm just dropping into some magnum trees, y'all. Waiting to get another bite. Dang, that wasn't what I had on there. He had it. Just hanging onto it. Well, well, so far, ladies and gents. The new lake is kicking my rear end. I'm not even remotely close to the bite yet. I think the program, the real program, that's going to catch fish out here, I'm just kind of throwing out whatever looks good right now, but I'm going to take about 30 minutes and idle around and look at some electronic things now. But I'm going to look at some points and just see if there's fish on, there's rock out here, along with the trees and the grass. So I'm going to explore all these options and I really haven't seen any schooling activity at the surface. I've seen some looks like small fish schooling. Below the surface, way down there, but let's go see if we can figure these fish out. It's the exciting part about fishing in the new lake. You never know. Dog it. Look how chewed. He just ripped it. Why didn't you have all of it? Deep in a tree. That was a hefty one there. He had it up the tree. Oh my goodness. Oh, you fooled me. Outside of the mouth too. I put the absolute stick on you, sir. Apologize. You don't want to get on that deck. It's nuclear lava hot right now. I'm so sorry. I'm going to turn you to the water. It's like bite number five. Y'all idle around. Came to a point I've seen a nightmare. There's fish that are schooling out in the middle of the lake. There's trees out here. 60 feet of water, trees. And there's bass that are popping shad out in the middle over that deep clear water. It's like impossible to chase those things down. So I'm trying to stick with some structure. I just had a good bite on this tree over here and a flip to the next tree. Caught that one. I'm kind of working it up the tree. Throw in a Slim Shake. The bigger version of the Slim Shake and it hit it like halfway up and just sat there with it. All the bites have been like that. They haven't run off. Just sit there. Like I'm hot. Not going to do anything. I'm just going to kind of gnaw on my worm like a Cheeto on a Sunday afternoon. And then you just get them. But I've missed three so far. I would love for the schoolers to just come up here and start whacking something. I think I'm going to be wasting my time just chasing those things around. So if you guys are wondering about gear I am fishing a what's a 7.5 heavy. So this is our muscle rod. This is a green series muscle rod. Actually this might be gold. It's one of the prototypes. I believe it is gold. It does feel a little bit lighter than the other one I have on the deck. This is 20 pound GS Flurro. I've got a 3.8 oz. Tonks of weight on here. A 5-Ot hammer hook. Love these hooks. They're great for rigging all sorts of plastics. But I like throwing this Slim Shake. I was throwing the Mondo worm but this gets down there a little faster. There's no tail movement. Any time you have a appendage movement it slows your bait down. That can be good and bad just depending on the situation. This might be what I have to do. Just grind. Grind in the heat with these trees. Na na na na Na na na na Big bass down there eat my lure. Oh, bastard's ate it right there in the grass. Oh my gosh, I watched him. What in the daaagum world? Oh dude, he popped out of there and chomped it. Oh, he's right there. He was sitting on top of the grass. That was wild. There he is again. What's he doing? Have we found something that these fish like? Oh, got you right on the grass line, little guy. Little guy. Why so little? Why not big? These trench rocks feel like some French fries that just came out of the fryer. If you ever want to get your plastics ultra soft just set them out in the Texas sun. This was right when it started getting a little deeper. Flipping on this little grass line here. Where the ghillie-ghillies live. Oh, there's one. Oh my gosh, come here, baby. Hit it hard. Dude, are you on a point right here? Let me just back up a second. I'm good. He absolutely smashed it. Smashed it. Another one about the same size. 15. Just a little suspicious that there might be another one here with the vicious attack of that one. Sometimes when they hit it that hard, they're in competitive mode. And it was on a point, like right on a drop-off. Oh, there's a bite. Oh, dog. Oh, isn't it, crappie? I believe it was, friends. You'll see that a lot of times. If you're fishing trees with plastics, if you get a hard thump, you need to pull up nothing's there. Man, I know I got a good bite. A lot of times it's cropping, especially if it happens a few times. They will thump it pretty hard. There's one right on the edge of those rocks. I thought I was about to get blundered right there by a big one. There is something weird going on here. There's a bunch of big rocks. And we've got grass down there. It's that lovely hydrilla. You don't think there's an ocho Libre down there. Crazy. Looks awesome. I just don't know if it's going to be today. Well, fishing freaks, we have reached that point in the day where it feels like the sun is trying to take your soul. It's a staber. This water is probably 90 degrees right here. I can even see some bluegill up under that dock, but there we go. Got the best of me today. Oh, little Martha. Little Martha is back on the no good egg train, unfortunately. Excuse me, girl. Excuse me? It's about that time of day where everyone has done laying eggs. So I'm checking if Martha is laying a good egg or a bad egg. And I can already tell you it's not going to be a good egg. She's got the dreaded dimpled egg again. Why do you have to do that? So it's very sad, but I don't know what to do with Martha. If you have a solution, let me know in the comments. And I'm sorry and I'm upset that I'm not able to bring you guys some more awesome fishing from some of those places that I've never been that I've wanted to go up north that are really good this time of year, but they don't like Texans coming up there. They think we're super spreaders and I think the only thing we spread is Lone Star Spirit, but that's just me. Fishing freaks, it's been a strange year. I wish you all the best. I hope you and your families are doing the best in this whole strange situation we got going on here. I think today marks really one of my last bass fishing trips before I head into the mountains. I'm going to be doing a lot of trout fishing up there and doing some serious elk hunting that is coming up next on the agenda. Stay tuned, subscribe, hit the notification bell. Is that thing still going? Make sure to just click all the things that increase activity on the channel. Signing off from Hot and Steamy, Texas. Hope wherever you are, you're having a great outdoor adventure. See ya on the next one.