I have not been to the Garhole since the end of August and I knew the water had dropped substantially. It might be a problem getting the boat to the water so I went early. First the leaves had to be blown out of the boat, then some large limbs had to be laid from the back of the boat to the water to keep the back of the boat from sinking into the mud. The water was down three feet so it was about 10 feet from the back of the boat to the water. I loaded my equipment and then pushed. It worked like a charm. I started in a spot that usually gives up a fish or two but nothing today. More good spots but again nothing. There is a top near a good place that I threw the rugby head jig into and one cooperated and chased the skunk away. There was nothing going on so I tried another top, this time just drifting up close and dipping the bait over between the limbs, no cast involved. Got another bite and caught another small one. The wind was high and the leaves made it impossible to fish a crankbait in many places. The main part of the hole was half leaves and half clear. Even just fishing the tops where the leaves were, there were no bites. When I moved out of the leaves a DT-6 caught one very quickly. I figured this must be where the fish are, but no more bites for a long stretch, even in the thick spots. The wind was really blowing the boat around now making it hard to sneak up against a top so I could drop the bait down between the limbs. When the bait went down into the top and hit a limb it would feel like a bite. I was fooled a lot of times when I thought it was a limb but it was a fish. I bet there were a dozen that I missed. When I started on my second time around, I saw on the depth finder a fish right on the bottom in 8 feet and said to myself “that looks like a bass”. After the boat had moved a little I cast a DT-10 to the spot and came up with a 2-14 which ended up as the FOD. No more however so I went back to the tops and caught a few more. By now it was 2:00 p.m. A DT-6 tried in one of the usual places and caught two more. It was obvious things were picking up somewhat, but not overly so. Went back to the place I started and caught one on the rugby head and one on a DT-10. I had to be out of the woods at 3:00 and it was time to quit with 13 fish.

Tuesday morning I met Hal at Wallace Creek landing on Enid at 7:00. The lake was at 245 feet which was a little deeper than we wanted. We like it down at least 6 feet from there. The first spots we tried only yielded a few small ones , probably a little over a pound each. We knew it was a little too deep for those places but they were great last year, and who knows, we might get the early birds. Leaving there we crossed the lake to fish a shallow point but as we pulled up we saw a shallow top sticking up close by so we fished it. Hal threw a plastic and had a bite. The fish immediately dove down into the top which was thick and it became entangled. We went over and Hal stuck his arm down to get his hand in the fish’s mouth. His hand pushed the hook out and the four pounder got away. We fished a few more tops with spinnerbaits, shallow cranks and worms and caught a few more. Hal had a favorite snag that is underwater marked on his GPS that we tried to find with the side finder but had no luck seeing it. We casted around and finally caught a small one. I then put the sonar on down imaging and we floated right over it, and there it was. We then went to a point where we caught some good fish the first time I ever went there with Hal. We got out the DT-10’s and caught three, one being a 5. I also contributed a DT-10 to the underwater structure after trying for 10 minutes to free it with the lure retriever. Getting over in the afternoon, we went to a line of sunken tops where we caught some right off the bat on a DT-6. A couple of times when one of us would catch one the other would immediately catch one too. One time we did that and only one fish came up and we couldn’t figure out what happened but the fish had wrapped the lines. We had a good laugh when we figured it out. One of those tangled fish was a 4. When that spot ran out we headed closer to the ramp and caught a few more small ones in relatively shallow water. The eagles are really reproducing. Every where we went today they were flying everywhere, some mature adults, but mostly immatures. At every place there were two or three flying around. It is great to see that. We ended up with 23 bass and a 5 pound FOD.