” Come here little boy and take your whipping like a man”. In days long gone by, that’s what my daddy used to say when I had messed up enough to get a whipping.  I had to do it today on Wolf Lake. All the deep spots where I have caught fish in the past were barren, at least for me today. The only bites were right up against the bank, and those fish had to be hit right on the head. They were also small.  Ten bites would about cover it.  The baits used were Booyah, DT-6, XD5, Zoom u-tail vibe worm, and out of desperation, a Bitsy Bug swim jig with a Paca Chunk trailer. Both flapping wings of the trailer were immersed in orange garlic Spike it and the fish would still not hold on tight enough to get caught.  No activity, except for gars, no shad. The only thing feeding that I could see was a kingfisher. It looks like someone who wants to write about his fishing could at least catch some. In the lake that Hal and I caught 132 bass a couple of years ago, I caught 2. Enough said.

  Click to enlarge. The most interesting thing seen all morning. Looks like a Ribbit.

I made the first cast this morning in the private hole with a Cripple Killer topwater bait. The bait had gone about 10 feet before there was a blasting strike. I was afraid that I was going to be a victim of the “catch one on the first cast” Hoo Doo. I was. The fish was a grinner.

I hoped maybe a Grinner Hoo Doo would be on and I’d see no more of them .  Continuing down the bank, it was quite a while before a bass hit and that one missed. Finally I caught a couple on top but not before some more misses. It was so much fun fishing on top I kept on even though probably more fish could been caught with other baits. Finally I put on a DT-6 and quickly the 4-10 FOD showed up. It made a pretty picture.

I kept alternating baits using the Cripple Killer when there was cover (logs) and using the DT-6 on the bare banks. The CK caught one by a leaning log stuck in the bottom in 20 feet of water. It was 4-6 and it caught another 4-6 not too far away right off of a little bush on the bank. That fish, as it came to the boat, had another about the same size trying to take the bait out of its mouth. Two four pounders fighting over your bait gets things kind of exciting. I caught two more good fish about 3 3/4 each. Both were caught on a Strike King Series 5 XD. One was caught dredging the bottom in 14 feet of water and the other was caught when I saw some bass knocking bream up on the bank on the other side of the hole. I put the trolling motor on high and took off and made a cast out the back of the boat to troll on the way across. The bait came off a shelf and into open water and then went across a secret sunken tree. At first I thought it was hung up but when it pulled back it was game on. I went back and tried the same thing and had another bite but this time it was about a 5 pound flathead catfish. Later in the morning the bite had evaporated so I broke out a swim jig that Hal and Richard have been having such good luck on at Beaverdam. No luck so out came a shakey head. Got a bite, set the hook, and up comes another grinner. I got out my cut off hoe handle and went to work on his head so I could get the hook out without a hassle. This is how I like to leave a grinner.

Final count was 13 bass, 2 catfish, and 2 grinners. Best 5 bass weighed 20-13.  Next I left to do what I came to accomplish and that was find a good place to bow hunt. I found three good places with acorns, honey locust beans and plenty of tracks.

After lunch today I went to Lake Ferguson to see if I could catch enough fish for supper tomorrow night.  Since it was a bluebird sky and a cold front just went through, my level of optimism was not extremely high.  When I launched, Barry Provis was also putting in. I told him I was lucky to be putting in with him because all I’d have to do to find the fish was to follow him. I started in the north end of the lake where it gets shallow because last year this time the bass were following the shad up there and we were catching up to 80 a trip. For the first few hours my lack of optimism was justified. Not even any bumps or nips.  I went through Yozuris, red eye shads, DT-6s, DT-10s, shakey heads, and finally a series 5XD caught one. I was delighted for I was starting to smell the skunk. Never did I see the shad congregating in the shallows. My 5XD had developed a leak and would sink. Unfortunately, it  got snipped by a gar and of course was never to be seen again. Luckily I had another .  A shakey head caught one more and the new XD5 caught a crappie out in 20+ feet of water. It was looking slim for supper because the first bass was 2 1/2 pounds which is over my keeping size. As I was working my way back to the wharf, Barry stopped by to compare notes and he was having trouble too. I pulled in between some grain barges where there is a spring and started with a shakey head. There were some shad along the bank just dimpling the water, nothing chasing them.  I’ve read when you see shad in the fall the bass are close by so I threw a small red eye shad around and under the shad.Voila, a small bass loaded on. Another cast and another fish, just the way I like it.  Sat there  and caught 8 before they quit or got scared. One was a 3 1/2 FOD. Ten bass in all . I was thinking in the first hours today that fishing in Ferguson this time of year, with the low water and after it has been pounded with tournaments all year, was fishing in the real world as compared to the Private Hole that has light pressure and has all of my “pet” fish in it.

This has nothing to do with fishing but should be of interest.  Recently Eustace IV had George Phillips, a paleontologist, to come to the Burrus House to identify the fossils people have been finding on the sandbars in the river.  I  took some photos and was told what most are. Remember you can click on the photos to make them larger.

These are buffalo teeth

Various horse teeth

Top is a stag moose jawbone and bottom is a ground sloth jawbone

This is three oyster shells embedded in a rock .One on each side and one on the bottom. He said they were 150 million years old.

These are buffalo vertebrae.  The left one is closest to the head. The right one is the next.

Various vertebrae

A buffalo horn that I thought was a tusk

A tusk that I have been thinking was a horn of some sort.

Three mammoth teeth, or parts thereof. You can see the enamel on the left two.

Not mine.  A mammoth jawbone with a tooth in it. It was on a table full of fossilized bones.

A couple of Eustace’s large tusks.

Someones mastodon tooth.

All of my things were found in previous years but people have been finding a lot this year due to the big flood in 2011. It washed down a lot of good fossils. Most of the things there were from 10 to 15,000 years old. There was a whale bone and the oyster shells that were much older. Interesting stuff.

Last night after a discussion of where to go fishing today, Mickey and I chose to go to the Chute. Our choices were the Private Hole, Lake Whittington and the Chute. We rode up in the rain but the radar showed it would not last long. It had rained enough to get the bank good and wet so we had to hook the boat to my jeep to launch. The weather was great with a cool North wind.  The fish were not great however. They would not hit on top so we changed to a Booyah spinnerbait at which they just nipped and bumped. It took a long stretch of bank to catch the first one. It was in very shallow water and sometimes when they nipped you could see a cloud of mud. The deepest water I saw all day was 5 feet. Since they were nipping we tried a shakey head but it got no bites. As the cloudy morning went on the bite picked up and we started catching a few. We also caught a grinner or two and began to believe that they were the nippers.  I don’t think we ever caught a fish out of the “deep” 5 foot water. We crossed to the “deep’ side but not much was going on over there. We then decided to go back to the starting point. When idling along on our way back the jumping carp started. Some were high jumping and some were low jumping, almost skipping across the top of the water. One bounced off of the transom and one off of the motor before one made it into the boat. Pandemonium broke out. The fish knocked one of Mickey’s rods out of the boat and it would have been lost had not the spinnerbait hung in the mesh on the soft ice chest. He fished out the rod and I took the boat hook and removed the fish. Then another jumped dead in the middle of my rods and started flopping in the floor of the boat. Mickey pinned it down with his foot and I got the tenderizer, a cut off hoe handle, and went to work on his head. The head on the carp was extremely hard. I’ve had that particular tenderizer for a number of years and I was afraid the fish’s head was going to get the best of it. However when I finished the carp was floating and would make a wonderful dinner for some raccoon. We ended up with 16 bass and a FOD just over 2 1/2 pounds. The real FOD was this catfish that hit Mickey’s Booyah in a blast that would have made a 6 pound bass proud. You may be able to see the devastated spinnerbait in Mickey’s other hand.

This morning after a quick limit of doves, I proceeded to the private hole to try my hand at the fish. My shooting this morning was much better than yesterday. Yesterday was so bad I almost quit. Pathetic and pitiful. I started fishing about 9:30. The period was supposed to start at 1:30 but I have found for some reason it seems to come an hour or two earlier here. It was not long before I was catching fish. The standard size in the private hole is 2 to 2 1/2 pounds. I started with a 5XD but quickly  had to change to a shakey head. The fish were biting but ever so softly.  After my deep spots ran out I changed to a Strike King KVD 1.5 square bill crankbait.  It was doing well until I hooked a jumping carp.  The fish was pulling drag and I was confident of getting the bait back but the fish hit the line with its tail and the line snapped. Many people have troubles with gar snipping their crankbaits off but those carp have taken more of mine than anything else. The closest thing to the 1.5 that I had was a Rapala  DT4 so I put it on.  I am really partial to Rapala crankbaits but compared to the 1.5 it was really hard to throw in the swirling wind. If you would cast into one of those gusts it would backlash every time with that flurocarbon line. It caught some fish but was hard to throw today. Look what I saw.

     and then     he left.

I don’t know if you can tell from the picture but that Gator was around 10 feet long judging by the length of my boat. Fishing slowed so I packed up at 2:00. The FOD was 4 1/2 with another 4 -5 and a 3 3/4.  I figured the best 5 were 18 pounds. I had no pen today so after catching 5 fish I would take my scissors and cut a small notch out of a piece of paper to keep an accurate count. When it really got slow I would cut an even smaller notch for each fish.  When I quit there were three big notches and three smaller ones for a total of 18 fish.