By Hanna Robbins – Half Past First Cast

As many of you may know, I am from Chicago. Up there, the word “Combo” refers to a very special high-calorie, high-fat sandwich — an Italian sausage under thin-sliced roast beef, slow-cooked in garlic au jus, topped with spicy or sweet peppers, all on an Italian-style roll.

When I moved to the DC area 16 plus years ago, no one here seemed to have heard of the real combo. There’s plenty of good food here, but you’ll have to go to the Windy City if you want a true taste of the combo. That doesn’t really matter in our household, anyway. My sandwich days are pretty much behind me, and at our dinner table conversations aren’t about our workday, they aren’t about date night, they are about bass fishing.

“When is our next Anglers Inn bass fishing trip?”

“Which lake do we want to go to, Picachos or El Salto?”

I have a severe case of FOMO (fear of missing out) so it’s lucky that Anglers Inn provides the only “Combo” that matters at this stage of my life: Two similar but distinct lakes that both offer great service and great food, but which can fish differently on any given day.

If Anglers Inn is on your bucket list and you aren’t sure which lake to choose now you don’t have to, choose both.

The best of both worlds: three nights, and two and a half days at each location.

The “conventional wisdom” tells us that Lake El Salto is known for trophy bass and Lake Picachos is known for numbers.

That can be true, but it’s not always the case. My largest bass was a 9 pound 12 ounce bass out of Lake Picachos and Pete and I have caught 103 fish off one spot in an afternoon at Lake El Salto.

Neither lake will disappoint.

What more can you ask for?

If that’s not incentive enough for you, I’ll present you with a special challenge: Try to one-up my personal best day of fishing. On one day in May of 2014, I caught a 9 pound 5 ounce bass at Lake El Salto in the morning and a 9 pound 12 ounce bug-eyed beast that same afternoon at Lake Picachos. Maybe you’ve caught two 9-pounders on the same day, but I doubt you’ve done it on two different lakes. That puts me in a special “combo club.”

Think of it as a double bucket list trip.

For any and all questions please contact me at [email protected]. Let’s get you to the lake…or lakes!