Monday morning Jackson and I went to Enterprise again. The water was up about another foot and was 105.5 on the gauge where the water was coming in. The water temperature was 45 degrees. We started out with deep crank baits, me with a DT-16 and Jackson with an assortment, one of which was a large fat free shad.  We continued with the deep diving cranks but in one spot that has been particularly good, I put on a Carolina rig with a small Balsa B “fatboy” tied on the end of the 18 inch leader. My intention was to be able to fish right on the bottom but slow. In 5 tries I came up with 5 bunches of junk from the bottom. Good idea but did not work. I even tried another higher floating Rapala type bait with the same results. We did not have much cooperation from the fish but after a while a 2 1/2 volunteered and shortly thereafter we had another bite but nothing to show for it. Then after a long dry spell through what I thought was the best spot, we moved. When moving we turned on the side scan and were seeing shad everywhere and in one place we saw some fish that might have been bass. We circled back and started casting. After we got through the spot we had looked at the FOD hit hard and was a fat 4 – 1. We tried and tried but could convince nothing else to bite so we left.

Tom and I went for a rematch on Lake Enterprise on Thursday. Water temperature was 49 to 51 degrees, the same as last week. The water was two feet higher than last Friday which made the water where we caught fish 14 to 13 feet deep rather than 12 to 11. That small change would not let my DT-10 touch the bottom and that seemed to be needed to catch a fish. Tom had a deeper diver, made in China, that worked fine in the deeper water. I put on a DT-16 but it took me a pretty good while to figure out how to make it work without dredging up cypress leaves off the bottom. The DT-16 and a 5 XD would get to the bottom and unfortunately two stayed there. My vaunted lure saving “gitter” was only 1 for 3. Once again,”Mr brag always loses his tail”. We also used rattletrap/Yozuri lipless cranks fished SLOWLY right on the bottom. The slowly thing was part of my problem I know. Most of the fish we caught were hooked on the back hook indicating they were just not into feeding like they were last week. The larger fish were absent too. Our FOD was about 2 1/2 pounds. The lake is full of shad. The depthfinder showed clouds of them most of the time. The fish showed this as they were all fat and in good shape. We ended up with 15, mostly thanks to Tom.

Today at 9 a.m., Tom , Jackson and I went to Lake Enterprise for the season opener. It started out slow. We were fishing out in the middle of the lake starting out with a deep suspending Rogue, a swimbait, a Carolina rig, a fat free shad, and a DT-10. The water was 10 to 12 feet deep in most places we fished and was around 51 degrees. You had to be careful to hold your rod up during the retrieve so your DT-10 would not pull up all the leaves from the cypress trees that were on the bottom. The Rogue struck first on a bass not much longer than it was. Shortly thereafter the fat free shad came up with one that was bigger. Jackson had to leave at 11:30 and when he did Tom and I left for the far end of the lake and ran upon the pipe that was letting water in the lake from Bayou Bartholomew. We caught two there on a swim jig. From there we idled along eating a sandwich and looking at the depthfinder. The lake was full of shad in balls in some places. Tom was watching for bass under the shad and soon said “There they are” and stopped the boat. He made a cast back toward where he had seen the fish and sure enough, one loaded on. Then I had two bites right at the boat on two successive casts   but missed them both. As we went down that side we started to catch a fish here and there. Then I caught one that was 4-4.

Not to be left out Tom caught one 4-10 and another 4-14 that claimed FOD honors.

We finally came to a place where it was a fish every few casts. By this time we were using a DT-10 and another diving crank bait. We were using them as if we were fishing a worm, pulling in by lifting the rod tip and then reeling in the slack.When you stopped pulling in and paused the bait while you reeled the slack was when the bite would come. We quit at 4 with a total of 22 bass with 4 over 4 and the biggest 5 weighing 21 pounds 5 ounces. An outstanding start to 2016.