My Christmas present from the Millers was a Jerry Rago swimbait that is extremely realistic. It looks just like a bream and has a big hook on top and a place for a treble under the belly. I put the largest treble (#2) I had on it but think the next size up might be the ticket.  It should be dynamite in Lake Monticello or the Garh —oops, the private hole where the water is clear. Here is a photo.

It’s as realistic a bait as I’ve ever seen.  Hal has totaled up the year and caught only 1916 fish for the year on 125 trips.  Both numbers are down for him since he has caught over 2000 bass for the last three years. The number of trips are down too 125 vs 143 last year if my memory is correct. He had two days of 100+ fish and 37 fish over 4 pounds. His largest was 6 pounds even.  The average per trip was 15.32 fish. No info was provided on zero days and I forgot to tell the other day that my zero days were 2.

Today I did a preliminary add up of the results of fishing for 2011.  Since there were only 54 entries in the book there will be room for another year of data in that same book. I caught 979 bass in those 54 trips for an average of 18.13 fish per trip vs 14 per trip last year. Last year I went 80 times and caught 1146 fish. This year I caught 25 fish that weighed over 4 pounds for 2.16 trips per 4 pound fish slightly more trips than the 1.9 last year.  The largest fish was 6 – 6, a fish from the private hole, vs  a 6 – 2 or 4  from Enid last year and way behind the 4 over 8 and 1 over 9 in 2006, my first year of retirement. That year I did not keep records but there is no telling how many fish I caught over 7 that I have no count of.  All of the big ones were caught on a Ribbit frog on top. I didn’t realize what a  spectacular year I was having then. My summertime flood project had a dampening effect on my fishing by cutting down the number of trips. It has cut down on my hunting too, reducing the trips to 9 in 2011 from 29 by the same date in 2010. The main part of the project is over and I plan to press the fishing until turkey season.  The low water on Lake Monticello and lack of lily pads contributed to lack of large bass numbers. I’m going to try to master several new fishing techniques in the coming year. Among those are 1. Drop shot rig  2. Suspending jerk bait 3. Carolina rig and 4. Alabama rig.

It’s been almost a month since I’ve been fishing, for bass that is.  The river has been rising, the deer are in rut, and it’s been cold, all negatives for fishing around here. Yesterday I was sitting up high in a tree watching deer running around in courtship, when they are most vulnerable, but I was thinking how much fun it would be to be fishing.  So today Mickey and I went to the private hole and there were no tracks on the bank to indicate anyone had been fishing there lately.  As we rigged up, the wind blew us toward one of our favorite spots. We had declared since it was cold, we were going to try the North bank first since it would be the warmest but the wind changed our plans.  I threw a suspending jerk bait on a spinning rig with 8 pound test line. When I pulled it down and paused it, a fish loaded on. The first one was the regular size but the second one was a 4 – 6. A good way to start.

The fish seemed to want to bite the bait when it was paused. I would crank down the Rapala XRS 8 ( I believe those are the letters) a few turns, and then pause, and then rip it and wait.  Here is a photo of the bait.

After we left the first spot, I tried my home made Alabama rig.  I think the fish need to be very active for it to work well.  I caught nothing on it today. A slight disappointment but it would have been better on Lake Ferguson two months ago. As we continued things were changing as the  temperature was rising.  Mickey got out his Spike It, which is a jar of garlic flavored coloring.  Just dip your plastic bait in and it has a chartreuse or orange tail and has a strong garlic smell. You really need to be careful not to get it on anything else or it will be colored and smell to high heavens. He put it on the tail of his worm and I put it on the tail of my swimbait.  It worked on both but it worked better on the worm, I think.  We finally got to the sunny North bank and Mickey caught the FOD, a nice 5 – 8 on a spinnerbait.

There were shad “flicking” out in the middle and I’ve been reading all these articles about fishing a jerk bait in the winter. I just had to cast out in the middle to see if there were any bass under the shad waiting on a meal. On the first cast there was a hookup with a big fish and I was thinking how smart I was. The fish continued by the boat and started pulling drag. Not so smart. A silver carp. In another spot, more shad were active and I couldn’t stand it again. On about the second cast a bass bit and came aboard. Redemption. We ended up with 32, the largest 5 being 5-8, 4-10, 4-10, 4-6, and 3-11 for a respectable 22 – 13.

Craig invited Jackson and me to accompany him on a duck hunt in the Louisiana marsh South Of Abbeville.  It is a wonderful spot that is reached only after a 30 minute boat ride. On our first day’s hunt we killed the limit, ate a wonderful lunch, and then returned to the marsh to fish for redfish. We fished in canals from a boat that looked more like a pontoon raft. At first we used a shrimp under a popping cork in very shallow water. I had no confidence in catching anything but our guide/captain caught two relatively quickly. His name is Shawee (I’m sure the spelling is wrong but that’s the way it sounds) which was Cajun French for Raccoon. Quite a character.  We found some running water and started catching some small redfish and some channel catfish, believe it or not. Here is a photo of a small red we caught.

You can see it is a pretty spot and the weather was perfect. We reached one spot where a good volume of water was coming through a pipe and the fish were there and biting.  By the time we got there we had ditched the popping corks and were just feeling for the “electrifying tap” before we set the hook. Jackson caught a large channel catfish and also a couple of crabs beside some reds.

We caught about 10 redfish and were able to keep all and take them back for appetizers before dinner. They were really good fresh out of the water.

Since we planned ahead with a well stocked ice chest and had a designated driver we fixed a drink and enjoyed the pleasant ride to the camp.