I was not surprised that it was hot this afternoon at 4:30 when Mickey and I started fishing.  We thought a quick afternoon trip even in the heat might not be so bad. The surprise came when we fished a spot I saw yesterday on my river tour with a young cousin. We were fishing a deep drop when up in the shallows the bass started chasing the shad. Immediately we went for the spot and caught some on a Yozuri. The first one caught was the FOD  at 3+ pounds. We caught a few and then things slowed. Occasionally the fish would show chasing shad in the shallows and we would go for them, now fishing with a shakey head and a worm. Finally we figured out the fish were staying in the shallows and not running up out of the deep to hem up the shad in the shallows.  We sat right there in the shallow water and had a good time. The fish were small but for a quick trip in the afternoon it was not bad. When things slowed to almost nothing we moved to another place. I fished there with a Johnson’s Sprite, a silver spoon with a treble hook on the back. It’s a lure that the old timers often used back when I was in high school. It’s a great bait for sandy bottoms but not good if there is anything to hang up on.  I didn’t realize there were limbs where we were fishing and I immediately got hung up. Sometimes you can use the weight of the spoon to pull the hook loose if you lightly jiggle it. I was doing so when trolling over to the spot where I was hung when a fish snatched it off the hangup for me. I was so surprised I did not set the hook in time to catch the fish but my bait was loose. We ended with 21 for the afternoon.

This morning I drove up and picked up Robert, who had spent the night, for an early morning of fishing, hopefully topwater. We started out on top but after halfway around and no bites except a couple of gar the topwaters had to come off and were replaced with a worm and a crankbait.  I immediately got snagged, that’s yankee for hung up, on the same thing I lost a bait on the last time I was there. After working with it for some time I finally pulled up some old braid with my bait in tow. We finally managed to catch a few but they were not cooperating too much.  Around about 8:45, we quit at 9:15 or about, it seemed the bite was picking up and the FOD , 4 – 2, was caught on a pearl colored crankbait.

We went on to catch a couple more one being a 3 3/4 on the same pearl bait. A high point in the day was when I found one of my lost “found” crankbaits that had floated up from its hang up a couple of weeks ago and was up on the bank, left there by the falling water. It’s always nice to add to my “found” bait box. I looked back in my photos because the last time Robert and I fished I took a good picture of him. Here is the photo.

The photo was taken in 2008. Far too long between fishing trips together. I’ll have to do better. We ended up with seven bass. After fishing we had a cool, windshield down, early morning jeep ride. When you’re on one of those, life is good.

Before I went to Lake Ferguson this morning I was thinking about my daddy going fishing when I was too small to actually fish. Sometimes I’d just tag along to watch. He would go down to the Yacht Club while it was still dark and walk down the old wooden barges with an old steel rod, a direct drive reel with some of that old black line and a Creek Chub jointed minnow tied on. The Creek Chub had a metal diving lip and a little tin tail. I guess it was the early version of a swimbait. Daddy would swing the bait down next to the barge where there were no ropes and bob the bait up and down in the water.  A lot of the strikes came from where the barges were joined together. He lost a lot because when he hooked a bass he had to pull it all the way up on top of the barge. Remembering this, catching bass on top in 30 feet of water, I went to the Yacht Club in my boat first off and started casting the Cripple Killer around the docks. The bass cooperated and would hit the topwater hard but I was having trouble hooking them.  They were small and probably not getting enough of the hooks. When that played out, after 8 in the boat, I went to the North end and had a drought for a while. I found a sandy bank with a few fish on it and broke out another bait from the past, a Johnson Sprite.  A Sprite is a silver spoon with a treble hook on the back. It worked,  and along with a Carolina rig, got me up to 13 fish, none big. I was preparing to come home and was scanning a spot with the depth finder when I caught something out of the corner of my eye. I yelled and dodged by leaning up in the seat. A silver carp whizzed by my head and hit the cowling of the motor, landed in the well behind the back seat, and made a tremendous mess with blood and green poop everywhere. Needless to say, after that I came home. Here he is.

I set out this morning to go fishing but to be off of the lake before it got too hot. The high was forecast to be 97 degrees. Early, the wind was already blowing pretty hard, not white capping but so hard I had to put the trolling motor speed on 3 and sometimes 4. I started at a spot Mickey told me about but nothing was going on right off the bat. I saw some activity around a root and cast to it with a Booyah, getting two or three bites and missing them all.  By 7:30 I had caught 13, all around that same root.  When I could catch no more there, I left and went down the steep bank with a “found” DB-3. My “found” bait box is getting thinned out due to not finding any and normal attrition. I almost had some more casualtys today. I made a cast and on the retrieve hit something and set the hook. The line snapped at the rod tip, I’m sure due to getting pinched between the spool and the frame by my old 5500C.  I used the same line on a new reel. I put on another bait and since I thought it may have been a fish, I cast to the same spot and got hung up. The “gitter” was called and it came up with a hoop net, and sitting there were both baits that were dutifully rescued. The rescued bait and the 3 1/4 FOD.

The wind was blowing so hard it had muddied the water on a particular stretch of bank. On the way in I spied a slight point and stopped to try it out. I’ve always heard the bass will get on the edge of the mud line.  Sure enough I caught a couple there. I ended with 17 and was off of the lake at 10:30.

This morning there was no wind on the lake when I arrived so when I got the boat in, a Cripple Killer was the first bait out of the box. I missed 4 and caught 4 with it. It was obvious they really didn’t want to hit on top because after throwing the Cripple Killer on a good looking stretch of seawall and not getting a bite, I followed up with a Booyah and caught 1 and missed 1. The Booyah got a lot of “bump” type bites. Those infuriate me because they will only bite once, never getting any of the hook, but I guess they feel they’ve made their statement and that’s it.  I tired quickly of the “bumps” and devised a plan to get some results.  I took a swimbait on a jighead and stuck the tail in some garlic Spike It thinking with some flavor the fish might hold on a little longer. They will hold on to a swimbait longer anyway because it has the feel of a baitfish. I had my mind made up that I was going to let them run with it before I set the hook.  I was out for revenge. Here’s what happened.

You can see the Spike It on the tail. It worked like a charm except for the fact the jigs I use tear up the swimbaits quickly where fish are involved. I used up all my Netbait swimbaits in short order and had to try some others that did the loop the loop and would not run straight. The bite was slowing at a pretty rapid rate so something new was in order. I crossed the lake and got out a Redeye Shad that you can hear rattling through the bottom of the boat. It was having stability issues too. Even after bending the eye it would not run exactly straight.  I believe I caught 1 on it before switching to a Yozuri. At one of the places Jackson and I caught them last year it got to be almost every cast for a short time. It was make a cast, catch a fish, and take a towel and wipe the perspiration. With no wind it was truly hot. The fish were in an area filled with gar, those big ones with leopard looking spots, and my bait never was assaulted by one. Remarkable truce. The day ended with 35 bass and a FOD , or two, pushing 3 pounds.

When I went to ready my boat in the private hole the day before I planned on fishing there there were 5 boats on the bank.  This made me a little nervous because the last time I went there I noticed my favorite and most productive spot was not as good as usual. I figured I had been getting some “help”. Saturday morning I arrived very early and a friend was already there. Fishing started off slow for me, but my friend was catching a few with a worm. The Cripple Killer topwater got the call for me. Not much happening there so I switched to a worm and still nothing. As the light got a little brighter some bass started knocking bream up on the bank. The topwater worked well on them. The fish were running in packs and if you caught one you might catch three in the same place. It was useless to fish on top unless you saw some action going on. While waiting I put on a deep diving “found” crankbait, a “found” one because they go deeper than my retriever pole will reach. The crank bait worked well until a large catfish  bit and when it got to the boat had rolled in the water like they love to do and had snagged the line on one of the hooks. Of course this cut the line and the fish just sat there tired from the fight with my bait in its mouth. When I tried to catch one of the hooks with a line guide to fish revived and swam off with my bait. Around 9:00 the bite picked up and the crankbait was doing well. I hooked one in the 6 pound range that came up and shook giving me the bait back. I ended up with 22 and a FOD of 4 -2.

This has nothing to do with fishing but I try to put interesting things on here that people might be interested in.  Rob and his sons went out on a sandbar and one of the boys found an ancient buffalo skull complete with the horns. It was only the top part of the skull but it is quite impressive. Here it is.

They also found a jawbone with places where the teeth were and also a hole where the tusk was.. In the photo his hand is where the teeth were and you can see the tusk hole. Craig, Sam and I went today, found 500 acres of rocks but nothing of any significance.

Mickey and I went to Ferguson this afternoon about 4:00.  We started in the very end of the lake and worked our way back to the waterfront. I tried a deep crank but nothing doing and after getting behind I had to switch to a worm and try to catch a few.  The first fish caught was the FOD which was 3 – 6. That fish was long enough to be a 4 but was not very fat. Long and lean but not overly skinny like it was sick or something. We caught a few here there and yonder but no big concentration in any one place. A rainstorm came by relatively close but no rain falling on us, only the downdraft wind that got fairly strong and made us move to a sheltered bank. Equipment malfunctions plagued us. I had a spinning reel that locked up and I had to wind the line in by hand until I started turning the spool and whatever was stuck came loose and I reeled in the last few feet. I made one more cast with it and it made noises when I reeled it in. A repair job for tomorrow. Mickey had the end line guide come loose after just getting someone to glue it on. We both had superglue but both tubes were hard. Another rod and reel deadlined.  Fifteen was the final number. I just looked back and saw that the last time I fished on Lake Ferguson was April 29th. Missed some good fishing there between then and now but I’ve missed a lot of fishing everywhere lately. Going to change that.

Fishing has been on the back burner lately due to a wedding, a move and a tooth.  In early May wedding preparations started in earnest. Immediately after the wedding getting back to normal began and then the move started. I drove to DC to get HMIV and move him back for a stint at the Ole Miss Law School.

On the way home a tooth, all the way in the back started to throb. Upon an xray, it was discovered to be a tooth that had been split before and was repaired with a root canal and a crown. Alas the crack must have continued, much like a crack in your windshield grows, and allowed those vermin bacteria to set up shop and start to hurt.  After a few days of antibiotics, here it is.

I hope this ends my fishing drought . When I came home from the dentist, I backed up to my boat in anticipation and preparation.