A boat had just pulled out of the first spot that I stopped at Tuesday morning on Lake Ferguson and had pulled into the second spot that I had planned to stop. The first place produced a two pounder on the Nipididdee with the new hooks and modified spinners. From there I poked around a few places, catching a few but they were mostly small.  In some places I never cut the motor off, just motoring over the spot with the depthfinder doing the work. When the river comes down just a few more feet, those places will get hot. When I came back by the second spot I had planned to fish the boat was gone and I pulled in. The first one I caught was a spotted bass, I think. Contrast  it with the bass photo later in this post.

Caught some others there, one @ 5-0, and a lot of stripes ( white bass ).  For the morning 9 bass and a lot of stripes, all of which I threw back. When I arrived home at noon, Willie fussed at me for throwing back all those fish, so I made a deal with him. We would go fishing that afternoon and keep all the stripes, but would have to throw back all the black bass. At a little after 4 p.m. we hit the lake. As luck would have it, with only two stripes in the ice chest, Willie caught a black bass about 3 pounds.  You just do not realize how much it hurts Willie to throw back a fish, so after a photo the bass went in the ice chest.  Note the difference in appearance of the fish in the first and second photos.

He caught one weighing 4 pounds later that we did release but with much pain, suffering, and conversation.  I was concentrating on filling the ice chest with stripes, but as it started to fill, my concentration shifted to the black bass. The black bass were not in the same area of our spot as the stripes, so we could fish for either depending on which side of the boat we were fishing on. I caught 8 black bass  on consecutive casts with a DT – 6, and managed to catch 7 more over the course of the afternoon with both the DT – 6 and a Bass Magic 4 1/2 inch swimbait. Most of the fish were between 3 and 4 pounds but one was 5 – 2. Daily total 25 bass. After the lake falls like it has recently, my “found baits” collection always increases markedly. Today there were three new additions, two pictured here. UPDATE: In looking at the Bass Pro catalog, I discovered that the crankbait pictured was a $16.99 Luckycraft. Ouch for somebody!

I don’t think I’ll even have to put new hooks on them.  The “found” baits really come in handy in Lake Ferguson with all the gar that can clip you for your good crankbaits in a second, and all the silver carp that can get foul hooked and break your line with their tail.  The “found” baits have caught a lot of fish for me. This is longer than most of my posts but it relates a fun day on Lake Ferguson. Last picture sums it up.

Willie said this morning that he cleaned fish until 12:30 last night.