Thursday was the first opportunity to go fishing in quite some time. Dr. appointments, weather and “events” have had my calendar jammed up. In the meantime I have ordered some replacements for baits lost last fall and a few extra things. Today was going to be the test of the new things, a reel, a new line and a new bait. The reel was a Shimano SLX70 MGL 8.2. It was Hal’s idea. He gave himself a new reel for his birthday so I thought I might do the same. The line was Fluoroshield again Hal’s idea because he had some and liked it. The bait was a Strike King KVD 1.5 Deep Squarebill that is supposed to go 8 feet deep, just a little deeper than a DT-6. When I hit the levee this morning the cows were all standing and eating which was a good sign but it was the only one. The wind was hawking out of the North and was cold and not a cloud in the sky. Bluebird day. The roads were posted “ATV Only” so here was my transportation. Cold it was.

Fishing started at 8. First up was the new reel on the rod I use for plastics. The reel cast so easy the first cast went up on the bank. Five stars+. Next came the new line with the new crankbait tied on . The line was five stars too. It was on the rod and reel I use with a DT-6 and needs to cast a long way and it did that easily with no issues (backlashes). I think I’m going to put it on another one of my rods. The new bait became hung up twice in the first 5 minutes which made me rather dubious but that may have been happenstance. A little more worrisome was that the bait sometimes would just do a loop the loop on the retrieve for no apparent reason. I don’t think it went 8 feet deep either. The jury is still out on it because it did catch the FOD. To start, good bites were hard to come by. I finally figured out the fish were very close to the bank and you had to hit them on the head with the bait before they would bite. It was a plastic day although a couple hit the swim jig and one hit the squarebill, the 3 1/2 FOD. Even down in the bowl that is the Garhole the wind made fishing difficult. You know it must have been because I quit at 2:00. Only caught 10. Might take up bream fishing, they were everywhere. I also saw this snapping turtle preparing to lay eggs on an almost vertical embankment. It was digging the hole and I tried not to scare it off but it left shortly after I went by. There is nothing in the photo to enable you to judge the size but that joker was big.