I only had an hour to spare today, so instead of going to the private hole, I went to one nearby that is shallower and the wind happened to be blowing into the end where the landing is. I had a tip from Frank that there might be some fish there. The wind blowing into that end usually means the shad will be there too and thus the bass.  I had a rod that belonged to my children when they were small and a reel that Hal found under the trestle  at Arkabutla when the water went down. He cleaned it up, put some line on it and gave it to me. The rod is a little limber but is not too bad. I had a 1/4 oz Booyah limetruse colored spinnerbait with a willowleaf blade tied on. One hit on the second cast.  I ended up catching 11 bass and 2 stripes in an hour, standing in one spot. One of the bass was eyeballed at 3 pounds and another was eyeballed at 2 – 13, there were also two on the other end of the spectrum that were microscopic almost. Never the less a good hour spent.

It was foggy when I arrived at the private hole this morning.  This is what it looked like.

Pretty spooky looking and was very quiet.  I went in a different direction than usual to start and started with a 4 inch swimbait with a hook exposed jig head. It was dipped in some orange Spike It with a strong garlic scent. It turned into a firetail swimbait.  Since it was so dark and was sort of cool, I didn’t expect any action right off the bat but I was wrong. I caught two quickly in one spot. It was a place where the wind had a slow vortex going around the hole and there were a lot of leaves floating in it. Not many more until about noon when things began to pick up some what.  Going through that drought I had resorted to a shakey head worm but only had two worms that were quickly torn. I took a small plastic with a club tail and trimmed the body so the hook would come out and put it on the shakey head. I dipped the tail in some chartreuse Spike It to enhance both the color and the smell. When you pulled it, the tail would swim and the fish seemed to like it.

This is the picture from the last post but with a regular jig head . The only problem was I only had one with me. A sack full at home but only one in the boat. When will I learn? After that was gone I pulled out another new bait, Spiked It with chartreuse and put it on the shakey head.

This photo is from the last post too. I think most were caught on this bait and a shakey head.  The bites were all very timid.  Once I wanted to fish a spot directly across the hole, so instead of fishing the bank around, I just turned the trolling motor on and headed straight across. Instead of doing nothing I threw a XRD-8-S out the back of the boat and trolled it across. Made it halfway across when the rod loaded up and this was on the end of the line.

The fish was in 30 feet of water suspended, I guess, right out in the middle.  There were 16 bass for the day with a FOD of 2-15 and 3 grinners.

This morning at the first good light I went to the private hole with the intention of first rigging up an old depth finder on my boat that I keep there and then going fishing.  The sonar is a Humminbird TCR 4 ID.  I wanted to fix it so when I finished fishing I could take the whole thing, wires and all, off of the boat. The purpose of removing the whole thing was so the rodents would not eat the wires.  After a brief vehicle swapping with  Gayden I was off fishing and soon caught the first fish of the new year. It bit a Rapala DTF 7, a flat sided diving and suspending bait. It’s supposed to go to 7 feet but in reality goes to over 10.  The fish was suspended out in the middle in 26 feet of water.

Keeping my eye on the prize of learning some new things,  I kept on with the suspending baits and caught a couple more including this one with an X Rap XRD 8 S.  X Rap Deep 8 Suspending.

I tried out some new baits too that I don’t even know the name of. No bites on either one or the bream swimbait from the last post.

Both baits were fished on the same jig head but the bite was so slow and light today it was hard to have any luck on anything that moved much at all. One of these was leech looking thing and the other was a small swimbait . The bream swimbait from the last post looked good but you had to move it fast to make it swim right and fast was not the ticket today.  Some were caught on the jerkbaits but most of the fish today were caught with a worm. The bites were light and hard to detect.  I ended up with a smooth 20 fish and a FOD of 3 – 0.  Of the new baits, the one I’m most excited about is a 3/4 size Ribbit frog  in an outstanding color. If I had acquired these before Christmas I believe I would have strung them and put them on the Christmas tree.

The first picture is the top and the other is the bottom.

My Christmas present from the Millers was a Jerry Rago swimbait that is extremely realistic. It looks just like a bream and has a big hook on top and a place for a treble under the belly. I put the largest treble (#2) I had on it but think the next size up might be the ticket.  It should be dynamite in Lake Monticello or the Garh —oops, the private hole where the water is clear. Here is a photo.

It’s as realistic a bait as I’ve ever seen.  Hal has totaled up the year and caught only 1916 fish for the year on 125 trips.  Both numbers are down for him since he has caught over 2000 bass for the last three years. The number of trips are down too 125 vs 143 last year if my memory is correct. He had two days of 100+ fish and 37 fish over 4 pounds. His largest was 6 pounds even.  The average per trip was 15.32 fish. No info was provided on zero days and I forgot to tell the other day that my zero days were 2.

Today I did a preliminary add up of the results of fishing for 2011.  Since there were only 54 entries in the book there will be room for another year of data in that same book. I caught 979 bass in those 54 trips for an average of 18.13 fish per trip vs 14 per trip last year. Last year I went 80 times and caught 1146 fish. This year I caught 25 fish that weighed over 4 pounds for 2.16 trips per 4 pound fish slightly more trips than the 1.9 last year.  The largest fish was 6 – 6, a fish from the private hole, vs  a 6 – 2 or 4  from Enid last year and way behind the 4 over 8 and 1 over 9 in 2006, my first year of retirement. That year I did not keep records but there is no telling how many fish I caught over 7 that I have no count of.  All of the big ones were caught on a Ribbit frog on top. I didn’t realize what a  spectacular year I was having then. My summertime flood project had a dampening effect on my fishing by cutting down the number of trips. It has cut down on my hunting too, reducing the trips to 9 in 2011 from 29 by the same date in 2010. The main part of the project is over and I plan to press the fishing until turkey season.  The low water on Lake Monticello and lack of lily pads contributed to lack of large bass numbers. I’m going to try to master several new fishing techniques in the coming year. Among those are 1. Drop shot rig  2. Suspending jerk bait 3. Carolina rig and 4. Alabama rig.

It’s been almost a month since I’ve been fishing, for bass that is.  The river has been rising, the deer are in rut, and it’s been cold, all negatives for fishing around here. Yesterday I was sitting up high in a tree watching deer running around in courtship, when they are most vulnerable, but I was thinking how much fun it would be to be fishing.  So today Mickey and I went to the private hole and there were no tracks on the bank to indicate anyone had been fishing there lately.  As we rigged up, the wind blew us toward one of our favorite spots. We had declared since it was cold, we were going to try the North bank first since it would be the warmest but the wind changed our plans.  I threw a suspending jerk bait on a spinning rig with 8 pound test line. When I pulled it down and paused it, a fish loaded on. The first one was the regular size but the second one was a 4 – 6. A good way to start.

The fish seemed to want to bite the bait when it was paused. I would crank down the Rapala XRS 8 ( I believe those are the letters) a few turns, and then pause, and then rip it and wait.  Here is a photo of the bait.

After we left the first spot, I tried my home made Alabama rig.  I think the fish need to be very active for it to work well.  I caught nothing on it today. A slight disappointment but it would have been better on Lake Ferguson two months ago. As we continued things were changing as the  temperature was rising.  Mickey got out his Spike It, which is a jar of garlic flavored coloring.  Just dip your plastic bait in and it has a chartreuse or orange tail and has a strong garlic smell. You really need to be careful not to get it on anything else or it will be colored and smell to high heavens. He put it on the tail of his worm and I put it on the tail of my swimbait.  It worked on both but it worked better on the worm, I think.  We finally got to the sunny North bank and Mickey caught the FOD, a nice 5 – 8 on a spinnerbait.

There were shad “flicking” out in the middle and I’ve been reading all these articles about fishing a jerk bait in the winter. I just had to cast out in the middle to see if there were any bass under the shad waiting on a meal. On the first cast there was a hookup with a big fish and I was thinking how smart I was. The fish continued by the boat and started pulling drag. Not so smart. A silver carp. In another spot, more shad were active and I couldn’t stand it again. On about the second cast a bass bit and came aboard. Redemption. We ended up with 32, the largest 5 being 5-8, 4-10, 4-10, 4-6, and 3-11 for a respectable 22 – 13.

Craig invited Jackson and me to accompany him on a duck hunt in the Louisiana marsh South Of Abbeville.  It is a wonderful spot that is reached only after a 30 minute boat ride. On our first day’s hunt we killed the limit, ate a wonderful lunch, and then returned to the marsh to fish for redfish. We fished in canals from a boat that looked more like a pontoon raft. At first we used a shrimp under a popping cork in very shallow water. I had no confidence in catching anything but our guide/captain caught two relatively quickly. His name is Shawee (I’m sure the spelling is wrong but that’s the way it sounds) which was Cajun French for Raccoon. Quite a character.  We found some running water and started catching some small redfish and some channel catfish, believe it or not. Here is a photo of a small red we caught.

You can see it is a pretty spot and the weather was perfect. We reached one spot where a good volume of water was coming through a pipe and the fish were there and biting.  By the time we got there we had ditched the popping corks and were just feeling for the “electrifying tap” before we set the hook. Jackson caught a large channel catfish and also a couple of crabs beside some reds.

We caught about 10 redfish and were able to keep all and take them back for appetizers before dinner. They were really good fresh out of the water.

Since we planned ahead with a well stocked ice chest and had a designated driver we fixed a drink and enjoyed the pleasant ride to the camp.

Saturday morning I went deer hunting on the farm, and not getting a satisfactory shot, I came back to the shop to manufacture an Alabama Rig that has set the fishing world on fire. You can not buy one from the manufacturer because it is way behind on orders. You can, however, buy one on Ebay as I found out this morning. Mine was made from the wire on surveyor’s flags. A line tie was made and then the individual wires that come out the back were looped around the back side of the line tie. I took my thumb and made a mold for the lead with a piece of buckshot mud. It was easy to fashion and the wires could just be pushed into the mud and sealed with some more mud on top.  Obviously the mold was a one time thing.  I had a 5 pound piece of lead that melted readily when the acetylene torch hit it. The molten lead ran down in  a stream into the mold until it was full. The front part, that you will not be able to see in the picture, ended up being too large but a grinder and a file took care of that and enabled me to make the whole thing more symmetrical. After the split rings and snap swivels were connected, the wires were bent into place and the baits were snapped on. Swimbaits were the baits I used, I guess because they  are the ones you see in all the pictures.  Looking in my tackle box there were some small crankbaits or rattletraps that may work better.

If I can get this venison business over with I’m going to try to see how the Alabama Rig will work and will report on the Bitespot.  People will come in to fill a need. There are plenty of them for sale on Ebay for $9.99 plus shipping.

Today Mickey and I went to Lake Ferguson in his new boat. It’s a War Eagle with a 90 Yamaha two stroke. It rides well in the heavy water as we found out coming in with a 20 MPH South wind. Here is a photo.

We started in the end of the lake where it starts to get shallow.  We caught 2 extremely small bass to start but the fish were just bumping the Yozuri which prompted us to switch to worms and in Mickeys case a Carolina rig.  He dipped the tail in a dye solution with a strong garlic flavor and promptly started to wear me out.  I switched, dipped and tried to catch up but I could not. As we worked back down the bank I pulled out a DT-10 and started to make a small improvement .  We swapped back and forth from the DT-10 and a Carolina rig, or a “ball and chain” as it is known.  The fish seemed to be in small schools because where you’d catch one you were very likely to catch another. Then continuing down the bank it might be a long stretch with nothing. The fish did not hit on top very much. We saw only minimal shad chasing going on, and when the fish did show, they were generally small. We were not alone on the lake today. There were two tournaments and a bunch of other fishermen. If you will click on the following picture to enlarge it, you can see 6 or more boats at the mouth of the chute.

We didn’t see anybody just loading the boat and there was a lot of riding, a sure sign of a slow bite. I’m sure there were some fish being caught, but we did not see anyone catch one, and believe me, we are always paying attention. We ended up with 22 fish and a FOD of 4 – 4. For you tournament guys, our largest 5 weighed 17 pounds.

This morning I went for a quick bowhunt, and after it warmed up, went for a short fishing trip to the private hole. I started fishing at 11:15 and quit at 1:45. In that time the bite switch went from on to off.  At the start, the fish were doing pretty well, as 12 came from one spot pretty quickly.  As has been the case for the most of the year a DT-6 did most of the catching. A worm, a Yozuri, and a Timber Tiger DC-13 all helped a little.  Toward the end of the trip, the fish had completely vacated what I consider to be one of the best spots. On the way back to the boat launch I saw some shad “flicking” out in the open water and just fired the DT-6 out in their direction and caught one.  Figuring I had solved the riddle, I started to cast to every “flick”. It didn’t work again so when I reached the launch, I quit.  Caught 20 in all with a FOD of 3-3.  I let the largest fish of the day jump and put the scold on me, throwing the DT-6 all the way back over the boat.  It weighed in the 3 3/4 to 4 1/4 pound area is my guess. Only one grinner today but he was well sedated when I saw him last.