This afternoon Tyler Owens and I hit Lake Ferguson at 3:00. Tyler is Ralph’s 16 year old grandson and was the recipient of a fishing trip that I donated to the Saint James Episcopal Church Bazaar for the silent auction and Ralph purchased.  I have been waiting for the lake to get “right” before I took him because I really wanted him to catch a lot of fish. We stopped at the rockpile first with no results. About that time Mickey called me and told me where the  bass were schooling. We were on our way immediately.  When we got there, Mickey sent us one way and he and Ed King went the other. The water was about three to four feet deep in the stumps and the bass were chasing shad in several places along a quarter mile stretch. Tyler and I had to abandon our DT-6s for Rattletraps because of the water depth. It seemed they preferred the willow trees that were still alive and had leaves on them. It might have had something to do with the shade they provided.  After we had been there for a while, I got a call from Taff with another report of schooling activity in a completely different spot where he had caught 30, in addition to the 27 he had caught earlier. Everyone was catching fish.  Tyler and I stuck to our stretch of  bank most of the afternoon only once leaving to go to Mickey’s 70 spot but by the time we got there nothing much was happening. We went right back to our spot and caught some but it was beginning to play out. Even though it was getting late, there was one more spot I wanted to try.  Nothing was going on there and it looked like we were finished but the bass surfaced a few yards away. We went to them and started catching fish as the full moon rose. They finally slowed down enough for us to tear ourselves away and head for the ramp. We had invited many of the fish we caught to Tyler’s house for supper and had thrown some back. It is one of the few times I did not keep a close count but it would be safe to say we caught 45 or 50.  Here is Tyler with one of the larger fish which he seemed to catch more of than I did.

It was a great pleasure fishing with such a nice young man.  I hope he had as much fun as I did.