I went to the Private Hole to replace the broken seat. That being accomplished, I stopped at another hole that I have never tried before. It is small and deep looking but I believe it is only about 6 feet deep, judging by how long it took my Booyah spinnerbait to sink to the bottom.  As I stood at the small landing, an alligator came over to see if I was good to eat.  It was just nosy but I figured it might be hungry after a long hibernation so I kept my eyes on it. At first I really didn’t have much luck, but when I reeled in a cast fast so I wouldn’t get hung up, a bass came up and hit.  After that, I began to bring it in fast and shallow and started to get bites. Many were missed, but as I started to hesitate just a tiny bit before setting the hook, the hookups got better.  I call that fishing a spinnerbait Jimmy Houston style. He is a  TV fishing personality that says if you can’t see your spinnerbait you are fishing too deep.  I can’t argue with him because he has a fishing show and I do not BUT I rarely fish a spinnerbait in that manner. I don’t giggle as much as he does either. When the landing spot was worn out, I noticed some fish moving down in a corner.  I couldn’t just walk down there due to a steep bank and now two alligators so I detoured up and through the woods to the corner. The bass in the corner were cooperative too. In about an hour I ended up catching 9, two of which I eyeballed at just South of 3 pounds.

After an uneventful opening morning turkey hunt on the Ides of March, I journeyed to the private hole to fish because the wind was too high to effectively turkey hunt. I caught 18 bass, 2 crappie and of course a grinner. I brought the crappie home for supper that night and left the grinner floating. The crappie and some of the bass were caught on a 1/4 oz Booyah spinnerbait. The other bass were caught on a shallow diving Rapala type bait that I found floating in Lake Monticello. I was going to use a rattling Rouge but looking at the hooks, I liked the ones on the found bait best. A couple of the bass hit it on top but most wanted it just under the surface. A photo of the bait.

I caught a few on a worm but only in places where anything else would get hung up. In one instance, I threw over a small stick, and when the bait hit, a tighteye hit it almost on top. When I set the hook with a little more force than usual, the seat back broke clean off. It was only due to catlike reflexes and fancy footwork that I didn’t end up sprawled in the back of the boat. The seat that broke was an old one that came on a tripod deer stand. I guess the sun finally took its toll. The other one was a donation from Mickey. Here you can see the broken one in the foreground.

Mickey and I went to Meridian to fish in his brother Greg’s lake Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday morning. Greg has been managing his fish with the objective of having a big bass lake. He takes out every bass he catches that is under 15 inches long. There are also 4 feeders placed around the 15 acre  lake and go off every 2 1/2 hours at 5 minute intervals. The lake is 13 years old and has bass, bream, threadfin shad and fathead minnows in it. Southern Pond Management has been his consultant. Whatever he’s doing is working as we caught 37 bass of which we kept 23 “culls”. Mickey and I caught a 4-6, 4-8, 4-0 and a 5-6 and had a bass in the 6 pound class ready for the net when the hook came out right beside the boat. Couldn’t count that one. Greg, on the other hand gave us a seminar, catching several in the 4 to 5 pound range and topped it off with the  7-14 pictured here. He also caught a 9+ a week or so ago.

As usual Mickey with a 5 pounder

Even I got in on the act

Most of the fish were caught on worms, although some were caught on Yozuris and even some on a DT – 10 and a crazy shad.  Some were caught shallow Sunday just before noon but that morning I caught one right under the  boat with the depthfinder reading 15 feet. Speaking of depthfinder, I saved some screen shots that were interesting. The first is a side scan shot showing two groups of shad ( center and upper left) with a few fish hanging around. The fish show up as elongated due to the slow speed of the boat, as you can see was 1 MPH. The second is a down image shot that shows just a swarm of shad with three fish hanging close by and an old log on the bottom in 13.6 feet of water.

The next one is a down image showing another shad swarm with 6 bass chaperones in 13.5 feet of water.

Needless to say all the bass we caught were well fed, fat and healthy. With this much food available I don’t know why in the world they bit an artificial bait. We had a great time.