Hal and I drove to Pickwick Thursday.  Thursday afternoon we were greeted with showers which were not too severe. This year I have a good rain suit as opposed to the one a couple of years ago that leaked so much I poured water out of my shoes when the day ended. The bass would hit a Ribbit in the shallow end of the large coves until the wind changed to out of the Northwest. Friday morning the front had passed and the wind was stiff out of the North. The fish were slow to bite until things started to warm up but there was no biting the top water frog. They would bite a Yozuri or a Red Eye Shad however. In one spot I spied a Red Eye Shad hanging high up in a tree where someone had cast too far and had to break the line. It was just swinging in the wind. I got Hal’s telescoping lure retriever out and after a few attempts snatched it down into the found lure collection.  Some of the places that were good in the past were no good whatsoever this time. The lake, as big as it is, was covered with boats even on Friday. We managed to scratch out a few fish even with the poor conditions and all the company. Saturday morning there were two tournaments out of the state park where we were staying. It was foggy so the start of the tournys were delayed. Hal and I just zig zagged through the waiting boats and left trying to get our good spot. The trouble was, our spot was not that good and in that cove there were either 9 or 11 boats. We decided to go exploring and rode  down to the next arm of the lake that was 6 or 8 miles up the river. There we did find a pretty good spot where we caught some fish on a shallow sand bank until the wind rose and the fish left because of the large waves that were breaking over where we were catching the fish. With that we left for the protected side of the river where we entered a small pocket. The fish came up in a school and started chasing shad but they were white bass. There was a pool noodle that was obviously marking a fishing spot and as we floated over it we saw a large object on the depth finders. Hal put on a DT-10 and cast over it several times and on one he hooked a fish that seemed to be large. We got happy thinking we might catch some more large fish there but the fish turned out to be a 5 pound catfish. The wind died down and we started searching for a new place again. Our search was futile so we finally headed in where the tournaments were weighing in. Thirteen pounds was the winning string, a lot more than we had come up with but the GPS said we had been 41 miles looking. Sunday morning was cold with not much going on. We quit around noon and headed for home. As we left we talked to a man from Hattiesburg whose son, on the high school fishing team, had gone fishing with some other people. The father was ready to leave for home but the son said by cell phone that they were really catching fish and he was not ready to go. Somebody was catching fish, just not us. Scolded by the high school fishing team. In all we caught 49 bass along with a good many white bass, a catfish, a goo, and a skipjack.