Saturday morning I went deer hunting on the farm, and not getting a satisfactory shot, I came back to the shop to manufacture an Alabama Rig that has set the fishing world on fire. You can not buy one from the manufacturer because it is way behind on orders. You can, however, buy one on Ebay as I found out this morning. Mine was made from the wire on surveyor’s flags. A line tie was made and then the individual wires that come out the back were looped around the back side of the line tie. I took my thumb and made a mold for the lead with a piece of buckshot mud. It was easy to fashion and the wires could just be pushed into the mud and sealed with some more mud on top.  Obviously the mold was a one time thing.  I had a 5 pound piece of lead that melted readily when the acetylene torch hit it. The molten lead ran down in  a stream into the mold until it was full. The front part, that you will not be able to see in the picture, ended up being too large but a grinder and a file took care of that and enabled me to make the whole thing more symmetrical. After the split rings and snap swivels were connected, the wires were bent into place and the baits were snapped on. Swimbaits were the baits I used, I guess because they  are the ones you see in all the pictures.  Looking in my tackle box there were some small crankbaits or rattletraps that may work better.

If I can get this venison business over with I’m going to try to see how the Alabama Rig will work and will report on the Bitespot.  People will come in to fill a need. There are plenty of them for sale on Ebay for $9.99 plus shipping.

Today Mickey and I went to Lake Ferguson in his new boat. It’s a War Eagle with a 90 Yamaha two stroke. It rides well in the heavy water as we found out coming in with a 20 MPH South wind. Here is a photo.

We started in the end of the lake where it starts to get shallow.  We caught 2 extremely small bass to start but the fish were just bumping the Yozuri which prompted us to switch to worms and in Mickeys case a Carolina rig.  He dipped the tail in a dye solution with a strong garlic flavor and promptly started to wear me out.  I switched, dipped and tried to catch up but I could not. As we worked back down the bank I pulled out a DT-10 and started to make a small improvement .  We swapped back and forth from the DT-10 and a Carolina rig, or a “ball and chain” as it is known.  The fish seemed to be in small schools because where you’d catch one you were very likely to catch another. Then continuing down the bank it might be a long stretch with nothing. The fish did not hit on top very much. We saw only minimal shad chasing going on, and when the fish did show, they were generally small. We were not alone on the lake today. There were two tournaments and a bunch of other fishermen. If you will click on the following picture to enlarge it, you can see 6 or more boats at the mouth of the chute.

We didn’t see anybody just loading the boat and there was a lot of riding, a sure sign of a slow bite. I’m sure there were some fish being caught, but we did not see anyone catch one, and believe me, we are always paying attention. We ended up with 22 fish and a FOD of 4 – 4. For you tournament guys, our largest 5 weighed 17 pounds.

This morning I went for a quick bowhunt, and after it warmed up, went for a short fishing trip to the private hole. I started fishing at 11:15 and quit at 1:45. In that time the bite switch went from on to off.  At the start, the fish were doing pretty well, as 12 came from one spot pretty quickly.  As has been the case for the most of the year a DT-6 did most of the catching. A worm, a Yozuri, and a Timber Tiger DC-13 all helped a little.  Toward the end of the trip, the fish had completely vacated what I consider to be one of the best spots. On the way back to the boat launch I saw some shad “flicking” out in the open water and just fired the DT-6 out in their direction and caught one.  Figuring I had solved the riddle, I started to cast to every “flick”. It didn’t work again so when I reached the launch, I quit.  Caught 20 in all with a FOD of 3-3.  I let the largest fish of the day jump and put the scold on me, throwing the DT-6 all the way back over the boat.  It weighed in the 3 3/4 to 4 1/4 pound area is my guess. Only one grinner today but he was well sedated when I saw him last.