Yesterday I came across some men from the Fish and Wildlife Service who have been trying to catch pallid (white) sturgeons, an endangered species, in the Mississippi River. They catch them and put transmitters in them to study their movement. Receivers have been placed on bridges on the river to record their presence. Over 80 have been captured and implanted with transmitters. They also catch some shovelnose sturgeon which are brown and more common. They are now attempting to catch some up and down the river to keep and send to the lab to make sure the brown ones are all the same species.The ones they had are all shovelnose.

The fish have a prehistoric look as you can see from the picture.  The man it the background is measuring a small one, that is small, but bit never the less.  They are caught on trotlines set in the river with worms for bait.  I think catfish are a nuisance but welcomed for supper. A closeup of the head.

The fish have feelers much like a catfish and have a mouth that extends down to vacuum the bottom. A closeup of the mouth shows it retracted, but it will extend down about 2 inches.

The photo also shows four catfish like feelers.  Sturgeon eggs are the source of caviar.  Some from Russia, Beluga,  sells for $200 an ounce.  Evidently they are plentiful in the River but in all my years of fishing I’ve never seen one until now.

Since turkey season is still on there has been nothing for me to report on the fishing front but as soon as it’s over I already have some places I want to go. It will be Ribbit time. I put on new line yesterday, some Seaguar Invisix flurocarbon 12 pound test. It’s hard to cast without a backlash but I’m going to force myself to learn how.

I met Jackson at the ramp of Lake Enterprise in downtown Wilmot, Arkansas at 7:00 this morning.  We went about 100 yards and immediately started fishing and I immediately started catching. Caught one on the first cast after seeing it move by a cypress tree. Fortunately, that did not put the hoodoo on the trip like it usually does.  I thought what a good guide I had. We started with spinnerbaits.Then caught some on buzzbaits and Jackson ended up the trip catching some on a DT-6ish crankbait. Here is a photo of the Lake.

Due to the low level, there are some tremendous stumps that your motor can hit right in the middle of the lake.  We hit one shortly after this photo was taken, one of many for the day. We ended with 18 bass and a FOD of 3 – 6.  It’s the first time I’ve fished there in a long time and I hope to fish there again soon.  If you go, BE CAREFUL OF THE STUMPS. I would not even plane the boat off.

I had to take one today on bass but I did catch one stripe.  Jackson and I went to Monticello despite a terrible weather forecast that was accurate. It was cold to start and the wind howled.  We actually had a couple of good bites, mine on a ribbit and Jackson’s was on a wake type swimbait. In the middle of the afternoon we saw a few in the pads but they weren’t thinking about biting.  Too early once again. I will not be back there until after May 1st.

This afternoon Mickey and I went to Ferguson. The water temperatures ranged from 61 to 66 degrees. The water was that beautiful color of green with at least a 4 foot visibility. The first spot we stopped was back in the willow trees where there are a lot of log drifts.  We caught one (3 – 5) there on a swimbait that was about a foot deep in 27 feet of water. We then tried to find the cow pen where back in the 70s we caught a lot of bass together. The trees in the upper lake have changed so much we could not find how to get there. We knew about where it was but the small bushes were so thick we couldn’t get the boat to the spot. We tried to fish back in the trees but quickly tired of that so we went to the meadow.  We caught 2 bass there, both on swimbaits.  Mickey missed one by a bush, and 20 minutes later when we came back by he hung it and it threw the hook on the jump. It would have been the FOD, probably around 4 pounds. He threw back in the same spot and caught one about a pound. The one I caught in the meadow had already spawned. It had a bloody tail and a sunken belly and weighed 3 – 9.  We had a lot of tap tap bites on the swimbaits from 6 to 8 inch bass that many times followed the bait to the boat. It’s shaping up for another good year on Lake Ferguson.

Mickey and I went to Wolf Lake this morning finding it turbid (muddy), with a surface temperature of 60, and a water level of 91.2 feet which is high. We fished around for a couple of hours and only caught one and one other lost on the way to the boat.  With this kind of start we made the decision to leave and go to the Firetower at Belzoni which was relatively close. At the landing we spoke to a fisherman putting his boat in and we came upon the information that the Yazoo River was backing into Wolf Lake due to the high level of the Mississippi River. Things started to make sense.  At the Firetower we found the surface temperature of 66 and water that was turbid but not to the degree of Wolf Lake.  The fish were relatively timid hitting the Booyah spinnerbaits but not sticking.  We were making contact.  Every now and then we would catch one and even some crappie. We surmised the crappie were some of the bites we were getting that did not stick. Mickey broke out a paca craw and caught two but Booyahs were the bait. The bite picked up after lunch but still their aim was off as we got a lot of misses or fish that came unpinned shortly after the hook set. Mickey lost the fish that would have been the FOD at 3 pounds which tells you they were small. We managed to catch 17 bass and 4 crappie in all.