Most every angler prefers fishing trips that never offer up a dull moment.

Action aplenty, that’s what anglers want. We go to great lengths to rustle up a few tugs on our lines and rate our success based on how many fish take the bait.

Sometimes the pinnacle is catching a dozen or more of our favorite species. Sometimes it’s a matter of how many different species we might encounter.

I hit the jackpot on the latter last week at Lake Milton.

My day was intended to be a bass fishing excursion. Bass are the fish I prefer and I’m rigged up for largemouths most every time I head to the lake.

The funny thing about bass is that while fishing for them, an angler might hook a variety of other species.

So I shoved away from the dock with bass on my mind — largemouths, specifically, with perhaps a smallmouth or two to add some spunk.

The first fish of the day was a bass, for sure, but not either of the two kinds I was targeting. It was a white bass, a chunky 15-incher that attacked the white and chartreuse bladed jig I was winding across a sand-bottom flat.

Back I went to chunking for largemouths. I had tied on a square-bill crankbait to bounce around shallow cover. But before I could find a bigmouth, a smallmouth inhaled the plug and did the familiar cavorting aerial battle that makes smallies so special.

I switched tactics as the sky cleared and the sun added warmth, opting to doodle a whacky-rigged plastic worm with hopes that a few more smallmouth bass would come to play. Instead, a jumbo yellow perch gobbled the offering.

A pattern was emerging. The pattern actually was that there was no pattern. A couple of hours into my day yielded three species on three different lures. Never a dull moment, even if my day was shaping up to be very unpredictable.

Any time I go to Milton, I know a muskie is a possibility. Sure enough, just minutes after I returned to casting and winding the white and chartreuse bladed jig, a muskie engulfed it and ripped a run alongside the boat.

As muskies go, that fish was not a big one, but at 30 inches it was more than capable of creating quite a commotion.

Finally, around 11 a.m., the largemouths showed up. I hit a spot that produced a trio of bass that couldn’t resist my soft plastic creature bait.

The sixth different fish of the day bit on my last cast. It was a 12-inch crappie with the appetite of a largemouth. It bit the same bulky creature bait I was tossing for bass, demonstrating that you don’t have to downsize to catch a few slabs.

Six hours of fishing, six different species — all caught during a so-called bass fishing trip.

You have to love Lake Milton. Never a dull moment.

Jack Wollitz is a writer and angler who enjoys fishing trips of all kinds. He also appreciates emails from readers. Send a note to jackbbaass@gmail.com.