Jackson and I met at the Lake Enterprise ramp this morning at 6. The lake was slick as glass. We hit our regular dependable spots and only caught one small one before heading to where I caught them the other day. Nobody home. Things have changed. The weather has turned a little cooler and that was accompanied by a North wind which is a major negative in my book. Also the duckweed which was blown into the trees on the North side of the lake is now in the middle of the lake thanks to the North wind.

 If the fish were up under the duckweed waiting on a Ribbit frog that would be great but it was not the case. The best thing about the trip today beside spending time with a friend were the ham sandwiches for lunch.

I arrived at Enterprise at 5:45 Thursday morning with the intention of catching up on my Ribbit fishing. The Ribbit fishing, or rather catching, has been elusive for me lately and I dearly love it. The fish were not in a cooperative mood as there was only one serious bite early and a frog malfunction (wadded up) let about a 3 pounder escape. A deep water spot with stumps underwater yielded a couple of fish and another deep water place yielded another, all on a DT-6. In that spot the wind had swirled the duckweed into a solid mass out in the center of the lake and there was activity in it, as Hal calls it, nervous water. Missed another on a Ribbit and then one jumped all the way out of the water and came down on top of the bait. Caught that one. I kept on fooling around fishing here and there and figured out a slight pattern of fishing the first outside trees with shade with a DT-6.  That fizzled out and called for a change which came when the DT-6 got hung, I think on some rope, and then broke off when I tried to get it off with my “gitter”. The wind was howling straight down the lake and blew the boat into an underwater trot line where a hook snagged on the trolling motor. At this point I had caught 15 fish. I was a little mad and discombobulated. A DT-10 was on another rod so I just picked it up and made a cast toward the center of the lake, and surprisingly caught a fish. Another cast, another fish.  It was one on every cast for quite a while. Finally the trot line and the boat separated ways so I went out toward where the fish were and tied to a tree because of the wind. When the boat floated over the school I looked at the depth finder and it was covered with fish from 5 to 10 feet deep. The count went up to 54 and the bite slackened I thought, but in reality the school had just moved.  I searched down that stretch of bank for another school but found none, so I returned to the good spot and tied up. It was on again, this time with a DT-6. Finally, with the count up to 72 at 3:30 with two doubles for the day, they moved again and I could not locate them . All of the fish in the school were small, the largest was about a pound and a half, but I’m a sucker and will keep catching them when they are biting like that. Earlier I did catch the FOD at 4 and a couple of 3’s. Today was a good lesson in that when things are going to hell, success can be right around the corner if you just keep trying.

 This is one that looks as if it rubbed up against a poison ivy vine.

During a slight respite from fishing, Hal added up the fishing results since he retired in April 1998. He fished 2154 times and caught 23,230 bass for an average of 10.78 per trip. That’s a trip every 3.22 days, or 113 trips per year, using a smooth 19 years of fishing. A lake in the backyard helps on the number of times but the figures are pretty impressive. Here he is with a couple of tight eyes.

Fished this afternoon starting about 4:00. I went to the meadow first where there were schools and schools of  gizzard shad. Each time a bird flew over they would scatter and sound like a bass passed through the middle of them. The water was beautiful and clear but you had to dodge the balls of floating fire ants. A whopper plopper and a swimbait were the two baits I used there but no interest was shown by the fish. Leaving there I went all the way to the levee in the upper lake where there were more shad. There is no reason in the world for a 2 pound and up bass in Lake Ferguson to bite an artificial lure because there are so many gizzard shad 6 to 9 inches long. I fished a long stretch of the levee with a swimbait, which you had to use due to the trash. Again no interest. In the distant past I have caught fish with a worm around the large cottonwood trees that grow on the large sandbar in the upperlake. I fixed up a shaky head and caught one around the first tree and the second one too. They were not large but I thought I had found them. Had one other bite on the shaky head and a smaller one hit at my swim jig twice and missed getting hooked. Found a couple and that was it but I got some good ideas for next time.

It was still dark when I got there and was just right when I started fishing. I didn’t start where I caught  the large fish last time but in a very similar place. The fish were not in a similar mood however and were not where I had anticipated. Since they were not in the lily pads, I tried just out from them in the sticks. I caught a couple and got some bites on the swimbait but the fish were small. Some other water in the 4 to 8 foot range has been good in the past for me and sure enough there were a few fish to be had there. The lake was slick and beautiful so every now and then I had to break out the Ribbit for a few casts in the good looking spots but no takers. The flats with 4 to 8 foot water and some wood were where the fish were but all were small. To start off the weather was clear but soon the clouds came in and then a light sprinkle of rain. Later in the afternoon the sun came back out and I was forced to take off the rain gear and put on the sun protection. When the sun came out it was over, no more bites even in a couple of good places. I had two things happen today that have never happened to me on Monticello. The first was I heard a turkey gobble. You would think on a lake surrounded by woods you would have heard a lot of turkeys gobble but today was the first. Gobbled probably 70 times. The second thing was I had a fish pull my swimbait off of a hangup. I had quit trying to get it loose and all of a sudden it ran away because a fish had it. I tried to set the hook but cane up with nothing. The total for the day was 14 bass and a stripe most caught on a swimbait but 2 on a DT-4 and one on a Ribbit. I don’t know where in the world the big fish are over there.