This morning I had originally planned to go to Wolf Lake but the weather was looking like it might rain, so against my better judgment I went to Ferguson.  Since the rise some of the spots I wanted to fish were a little too deep but I figured the fish would be there anyway. At the first place a 3 1/2 ate my swimbait so I figured all was going to be fine. Another quickly bit but after that things slowed markedly.  By 10:30 I had only 4, things were looking bleak, and the clouds were getting heavier so it was time to go home. No pictures because I couldn’t catch anything worth taking a photo of.

Clarence, our dog, usually gets out of our bed, and shakes twice when he’s ready to go outside to “do his business”. This morning at 10 until 4 was no exception. I usually “do my business” before I escort Clarence to the back yard.  This morning, I discovered when I came out of the bathroom, that I had been tricked because Clarence was back in the bed and IN MY SPOT and sandbagging, not wanting to move.

Since I was awake, I decided to make the best of the situation and go fishing.  By the time I arrived at the Garhole and launched it was 6 straight up. The bass have been in a different location each day in the Garhole. Today they were not out in the middle as they have been. They were still liking the Ribbit frog. This one was the last of the 8 caught in the first hour and the FOD of 3 – 9.

As the morning went on, the bite slowed and forced me to try other baits, one being a fluke. I used the fluke after getting a good fluke demonstration the other day from Hal.  Also the DT-6 came out and demonstrated its versatility, catching a 9 pound catfish on the first cast and then two bass and a crappie in quick succession. Eventually the DT-6’s mojo gave out and things were getting slow. I was hung up with a Ribbit  on a vine next to the bank and holding the line tight as I went to retrieve my bait as a Prothonotary Warbler came and lit on the end of my rod. It was a first ever for me. It stayed for a few seconds and left only as I stealthily, I thought, reached for the camera in my shirt pocket.

I ended the day with 17 fish which makes a total of 104 bass from the Garhole for the  3 trips in the last week. That is excellent but it’s time for the Garhole to rest for a while.

Since Saturday was such a success, I wanted to share the wealth. That seems to be the politically correct thing to do these days. Hal could come, spend the night and fish on Monday, so he got the job. We put in earlier than before, and just like before, the fish were out in the middle  to start. We caught the better fish there but the bite was not as intense as Saturday.  The fish size was nowhere close.  We caught 56  with the FOD of 3 – 12. There were three others over three and a few just under. Many were this size although maybe not as fat.

Hal caught some on a Ribbit but most on a sluggo or fluke type bait. He would skip the bait under the bushes to the bank where the fish were waiting in the shade.  Here he is with a fish vying for the smallest of the day.

I think I caught the fish with the sunken belly again that was pictured in Saturday’s post. It looked the same and had a wound in its mouth from Saturday’s hook.  We had a great time in the Garhole that was known as the Third Dike Bluehole when we fished it while in high school.

Put in at the Garhole this morning at 5:45 which was about 30 minutes late. Since there is a good bit of moss around the bank with coontail underneath, the plan was to concentrate on the moss with a Ribbit.  I weeded out the pocket of my tackle bag that holds my plastics the other day and I remembered  that I had a bag of 10 Ribbits in there somewhere.  The usual Ribbit rod for me is a 7 foot medium action with a Shimano spinning reel and 20 pound braid, but this morning since that rod had been relegated to be used as a worm rod,  I used a 7 foot medium with a Citica and 14 pound flurocarbon.  Casting without backlashing was the only issue that worried me. On the first cast out into the middle to make sure the settings were right, I had a bite and was so surprised I didn’t even set the hook.  With that start, I started casting out to the middle where there was scattered floating moss. This one with a sunken stomach was the first one I caught.

They were out prowling in the open and I caught a good many there. All were in the two to three pound range. It seemed strange to be throwing a topwater Ribbit frog in 37 feet of water and catching fish to boot. I went to a part of the hole that is shallower, 5 to 8 feet. There the duckweed was being blown around and the fish were following it  so they could stay in the shade. Under the water coming to within a couple of feet of the top were coontail castles of moss.  The fish today weren’t messing around. There was no airballing, no hitting and missing, or no following up. When the bass hit today they had one thing on their mind — FROGLEGS ! They were blasting it.  I caught 20 on the 10 Ribbits, and after the last one had been ruined, I thought about how stupid it was to have 300 at home and no more than 10 in the boat. On one more check of the tacklebag I found a bag and 1/2. Game back on. I think the FOD, 4 – 5, got the last of the first bag. You can see the moss in the background.

I went on to catch 31 by 12:30, each one an a Ribbit.

At 5 p.m. I started fishing this afternoon on a rising river.  Usually I do not have great luck when the river is rising but I figured the fish have to eat whatever the river is doing.  Two bit a swimbait right off the bat over an old sunken barge and after trying some other spots two more bit there, one on the swimbait and one on a worm. I caught one other one on a worm in another place and I quit at 8 p.m.. FOD was 3 1/4 and I had one other just over three.  One of the places I had good luck in the other day had so many shad in it there’s no way a fish would hit an artificial bait. Just too much of the real thing. I’m going to have to go somewhere else until the river starts to fall.

Lake Ferguson is rising slightly but I went there this morning early to try to have a little topwater fun.  I had missed a couple of small ones and was fishing near some vines when a bass about 2 pounds hit the bait hard and went for the vines where it hung up and managed to break the line. It took my Nipididdee with the big hooks.  A few small ones were all that cooperated this morning and about noon I went to this culvert where some more small ones bit.

I went to the places where Friday they were really biting but the fish were not in the exact same location today. They would be to one side or the other of the spot .  I managed to catch the 3 – 6 FOD in one however. It was obvious the bite was getting better in the afternoon. Friday I had a silver carp to power away with a DT – 10 and was lucky to get the last one in the Wal Mart yesterday to replace it.  I lost that DT – 10 twice today, once to a gar and got it back, and once to a fish that hung me and it in a bush. I used both of my plug retrievers and never touched the bait. The fish was still on the hooks! Finally I gave up and broke it off. The day ended with 14 fish of which 4 were 3 or better. The silver carp are thick in Lake Ferguson and must be tearing up the commercial fishermen’s nets because there were dozens of them floating around on the lake today.

In preparation for a fishing trip with Craig and his daughter Bland, I went to Fergy  at 1:30 p.m. because they were coming at 4 p.m.. The idea was to find a place where Bland could catch some stripes and lots of them. I had heard of a culvert with running water and knew several other places where luck had been had in the past but I needed to solidify a plan.  The second place I went blew the scouting trip wide open as I caught a 5 – 2 on about the second cast. A 4 -14 came next and then a 3 3/4 and a couple just under 3. All were on a DT -10. I got back on the stripe quest but black bass kept trying to divert my attention, including one more 4 pounder. I caught 10 before 4:30 when I picked them up at the wharf. We went to  some good places but “THE” spot did not pan out.  Bland  caught some stripes but not one every cast as I had planned. Craig caught 2 black bass and a stripe or two as well as Bland catching some stripes. I caught Bland. In making one of my hero casts, the bait landed in a tree. When I pulled it out it came whizzing back and I heard it hit Bland. Thank goodness it stuck in shorts only and no flesh. When the bait got hung up after that, she was noticeably nervous, and I can’t blame her.  The FOD.

Willie and I returned this afternoon to the scene of the crime . Amazingly no one was perched in the spot, but it was not long before boat after boat showed up.  It’s a pitiful comment on “sportsmen” when you have to defend your spot.  Those people would cast over your boat if they thought they could catch a fish there. It was especially bad after I caught a couple of 4 pounders right in front of them.  We continuously had to position our boat just to be able to keep the interlopers out. No regard whatsoever for anyone except themselves. The stripes were not there as thick as the other day when we caught more than 75 according to Willie’s count.  More like 5 to 7 today. The DT – 6 was not working today but I caught 6 bass on a shakey head, including a 4-4, a 4-14, and a 5-2. The rest were around 3, for a top 5 around 20 pounds.

A boat had just pulled out of the first spot that I stopped at Tuesday morning on Lake Ferguson and had pulled into the second spot that I had planned to stop. The first place produced a two pounder on the Nipididdee with the new hooks and modified spinners. From there I poked around a few places, catching a few but they were mostly small.  In some places I never cut the motor off, just motoring over the spot with the depthfinder doing the work. When the river comes down just a few more feet, those places will get hot. When I came back by the second spot I had planned to fish the boat was gone and I pulled in. The first one I caught was a spotted bass, I think. Contrast  it with the bass photo later in this post.

Caught some others there, one @ 5-0, and a lot of stripes ( white bass ).  For the morning 9 bass and a lot of stripes, all of which I threw back. When I arrived home at noon, Willie fussed at me for throwing back all those fish, so I made a deal with him. We would go fishing that afternoon and keep all the stripes, but would have to throw back all the black bass. At a little after 4 p.m. we hit the lake. As luck would have it, with only two stripes in the ice chest, Willie caught a black bass about 3 pounds.  You just do not realize how much it hurts Willie to throw back a fish, so after a photo the bass went in the ice chest.  Note the difference in appearance of the fish in the first and second photos.

He caught one weighing 4 pounds later that we did release but with much pain, suffering, and conversation.  I was concentrating on filling the ice chest with stripes, but as it started to fill, my concentration shifted to the black bass. The black bass were not in the same area of our spot as the stripes, so we could fish for either depending on which side of the boat we were fishing on. I caught 8 black bass  on consecutive casts with a DT – 6, and managed to catch 7 more over the course of the afternoon with both the DT – 6 and a Bass Magic 4 1/2 inch swimbait. Most of the fish were between 3 and 4 pounds but one was 5 – 2. Daily total 25 bass. After the lake falls like it has recently, my “found baits” collection always increases markedly. Today there were three new additions, two pictured here. UPDATE: In looking at the Bass Pro catalog, I discovered that the crankbait pictured was a $16.99 Luckycraft. Ouch for somebody!

I don’t think I’ll even have to put new hooks on them.  The “found” baits really come in handy in Lake Ferguson with all the gar that can clip you for your good crankbaits in a second, and all the silver carp that can get foul hooked and break your line with their tail.  The “found” baits have caught a lot of fish for me. This is longer than most of my posts but it relates a fun day on Lake Ferguson. Last picture sums it up.

Willie said this morning that he cleaned fish until 12:30 last night.

I met Hal Friday at Enid for a day of fishing. We had not fished together in a long time so I was really looking forward to it.  The MDWFP fishing report said the bass were being caught on the points of the lake, and when we put in there was confirmation of that in the position of the boats. One boat was sitting on my favorite pile of rocks with no intention of moving soon. The major feeding period was in the afternoon, a good thing, since it took us a good time to get a pattern figured out. No fish was caught on a point and I can assure you I made Hal try a lot of them. We found the fish around cypress trees and bushes in 4 feet of water on the main lakebank. That was mentioned in the report too, but for some reason, I just glided right over that part. Most were caught on worms of some sort. Spinnerbaits and also a swim jig accounted for some too.  We ended up with 28 including the FOD of 6 – 1 or 2. I can’t remember which the scale settled on. What I can remember is it was hooked on the tongue patch and when I stuck my thumb it its mouth and lifted it from the water, I used only two fingers to remove the hook. It was barely hooked and I was lucky to get it in the boat.

I had a strange thing happen.  Just having retied because of a roughed up line (8# test Gamma copolymer), I made a cast and on the backcast the bait came loose. When I inspected the end of my line I found the knot had come loose.  Sometimes I tie the Trilene knot without my glasses, so I figured it was a slip up due to a misstied knot. But after it happened two more times in short order, I was scared senility had set in and I had forgotten how to tie the knot.  I made Hal stop fishing, we put on our glasses, and he watched me tie the knot. It was tied correctly except for cinching it down very tight and using my fingernail to push the wraps up tight together. No more problems after that.  When we left there was a boat,the same one or maybe another, still occupying my favorite rock pile.