Hal and I went to the Garhole Tuesday morning. When we arrived at the boat landing, we found the boat floating because all the recent rain/ice had caused a rise in the water. We winched the boat up on the bank and with the help of a bucket, drained the boat in short order. I hooked up the depth finder and we set sail. The newsed (Ebay) Lowrance depth finder down imaging worked great once I got the settings right. Fishing started around 9:00. It was slow going to start as we had to figure what the game was. Hal started catching a few on a “lunchworm”, a small Berkley worm on a slider head. It took me a long time to catch one. I remembered that I used to catch bass this time of year on a Booyah spinnerbait, so I put one on and finally long handled netted one on it. On one of my rods there was a Berkley Chigger Craw and since it is close to a worm I reverted to using it. The fish were not concentrated, one here and one there and most were shallow and close to the bank. That scenario was perfect for the spinnerbait so I picked it back up. It started working right away and the fish seemed to be larger than on the worm. It seemed the bite really picked up around 1:30 when the sun came out and it got balmy. It seemed to slow back down about 4:00. We quit at 4:30 not only because the bite had slowed but when I tried to crank the jeep that morning the battery quickly died. Not to worry we had some booster cables and the trolling motor battery but that would take time. It cranked fine but going for a new battery today. The old one was new in 11/15 because that was written on it. We also had to rearrange the boat rack and get it all squared away. Hal did all the heavy lifting as I just had a back surgery on February 2nd. We caught 22 with a FOD of 5 pounds. There were also a 4 3/4, a 3 3/4 and a couple of 3 evens. The FOD:

This morning I read this article on how Bass populations are affected by different factors. It comes from studies done on Kentucky Lake by state game and fish people. The whole article was interesting but my attention was particularly drawn to the effect of silver carp on bass populations. The article said the effect was not much. As a fisherman I tend to agree. Also of interest was the effect of tournaments on bass populations, especially the survival of summertime caught tournament fish. The article is at the following address:

https://www.wired2fish.com/fishing-tips/largemouth-bass-populations-what-affects-bass-fishing-on-large-reservoirs/