The private hole is coming back !  I started fishing at 10:30. Not having been fishing in almost two months, I had to call around to get some ideas on what to use. Hal was fishing when I called and was not having much luck. Tom has been catching fish out in the middle of Lake Enterprise on a hair jig and a crankbait. He said you had to see shad on your depthfinder and the bass would be under them.  As I prepared the boat there were shad “flicking” the top of the water out in one certain spot. That spot was added to my “be back book”. The first place was right at the landing where, the last time I was there, I got a lot of small fish bites on a worm with none caught. A shaky head was sent in for revenge but the same bump bump bites came with none caught. A DT-6 was the same size as the “flickers” so I figured it would work if I could make myself pull it slow enough. It did catch some small ones. This place was a shallow point one of the few around the hole. After the point I headed for the “flicking”shad which were out in 25 feet of water. The bass were there and at one point there was one on every cast.  There were other places I wanted to try but I was not going to leave biting fish. Many were caught just as the bait started coming up to the boat. Some just followed the bait up and made a halfhearted swipe at it as it came out of the water. The size of the fish ranged from small to very small so in an effort to catch some larger fish I put on a DT-10.  It immediately caught fish but the same small ones. I also tried a Rapala XRAP XRD 8 jerk bait. It is longer then the DT-6 and I noticed there were a lot more follow ups that did not bite so I stayed with the DT-6. The shad were everywhere and so were the bass, so many in fact, I did not even get to try some of my favorite places. The fish were in great shape and fat as they could be and they have plenty of shad to eat.

I did my best to photograph the depthfinder when a mass of shad were present. Food is not going to be the problem. The FOD’s were 1 1/2 pounds. I quit at 2:15 and caught 81 in 4 1/2 hours fishing. That figures to a fish every 3 1/3 minutes. Lots of action even if they were small. If all of our river lakes are this healthy it’s going to be great fishing in a couple of years when these little ones grow up.