It has been two months since I last went fishing, probably a post retirement record. The dry stretch was caused by deer hunting until about the middle of December. Then my children came home for Christmas and I didn’t want to miss a minute of them being home. Now, for the last two weeks, it’s been the cold weather. There has only been one day in 2018 that was decent to go but I had a meeting and then some other things came up to take up the rest of the day. I’m fighting off the cabin fever and when the weather gets conducive for fishing I’m going to make up for lost time. Right now I’m sitting the fireplace with a good blaze going.

No fishing lately because of this: Did not shoot, not old enough or large enough but pretty.

Hal has been going with varied success. The catch at Beaverdam trailed off toward the start of duck season when they had to stop fishing there. Hal finally made his first catch with an Alabama rig.

Fishing will start in earnest after the start of the new year.

Today Hal and I started fishing at the private hole about 9:00 under a beautiful blue sky. The snow geese were pouring over in never ending streams going out to feed and making a terrible racket disturbing my quiet morning in the woods. I thought if the geese were hungry maybe the fish would be too. At first they were not, but as the day warmed the bite picked up. I started off with a DT6, a worm, a DT10 and a swimbait.  It was like throwing things against the wall to see what would stick. I was partial to the swimbait because it is what I caught them on the last time. They liked it today too. Like last time, the bites were light and you had to let them have it for a second or two before setting the hook. While I pretty much stuck with the swimbait, Hal had success on a Booyah and a shaky head worm.  Since it is fall the leaves are falling in the water and in some areas made it hard to fish. As the wind cleaned out one good spot it messed up another. We had decided that 3:00 was our hard cutoff hour and we hurried to make another circle before we had to leave. We caught nothing on that circle so leaving was not as hard as usual. We caught 31 with a FOD of 4 and others of 3 3/4, and two 3’s. One of the neat things we saw today was a family of 4 river otters. They are neat animals, but I really hate  to see them in my fishing spot. They don’t practice catch and release and are very efficient fishers or rather catchers.

Signs of trouble showed up as I prepared to go fishing on Lake Ferguson Monday afternoon. First, there were no clouds in the sky, a perfect blue bird day, one on which in the past has not had a good record of me catching a bunch of fish. Second, while filling my boat with gas, I saw a guy coming off the lake filling up his blaster, who said he had not even one bite all morning. Third, the wind was blowing 15 miles per hour straight down the lake. I went anyway. The wind made it almost impossible to fish where I wanted to . Mickey and I had a couple of good trips this time last year at this water stage and I wanted to check those places out with a DT10. The job I did was better than I expected checking the places out but with no luck catching fish. I believe the fish were not in a chasing mood and it was too windy to fish a worm effectively. I retreated to some calm water and finally made contact with a DT6 in relatively shallow water. After no more luck with the DT6 I broke out the trusty Booyah and caught the FOD, a 2 -13. In checking out some of the shallow stumps, I made a bad cast, and in a rush to make another, I hurried the Booyah to the boat. The streaking bait spooked some shad and in turn a bass came out of the open and busted in the middle of the shad. The water was so shallow the activity blew up a cloud of mud. After about 10 casts to the open water the fish never would hit. Disgusted, I went home. It’s fun to write on here about the good trips, but one like Monday, not so much.

I received this email from Hal yesterday. It shows how catch and release works if people will practice it. Some people are proud of a big fish and can’t stand not bringing it in so they can brag a little. Of course, that kills the fish, takes it out of the population, and denies other people or even yourself the opportunity to enjoy catching it again. Keeping a big fish is actually a very selfish thing to do. Just take a picture, let it go, and feel good about it. I have released 7 fish that weighed between 8 and 9 1/2 pounds (largest I’ve ever caught) so I practice what I preach. Here is the email:

Caught this six pounder yesterday at the pits. It is the same bass I caught three times in May of 2012, twice on same day then again a week later, all on same cypress. The black spot on her head is pretty distinctive but the tag still attached was definitive. She only gained a half pound and moved about a quarter mile. Caught on a KVD 1.5 the first and last time.  She didn’t look very healthy but put up a good fight. Caught nine others including a three. Had really good whopper plopper action late.

I heard Monticello was undergoing a draw down of 8 to 10 feet. I also heard that a good many fish were being caught. I had to go look.

All the brown dirt used to be covered with water. Look at all those sticks. A guy could get hung up out there. I could not use that landing and had to drive to the other one. I caught some in the 2 pound range on a Booyah pretty quickly but then I lost them. The water had 5 to 6 foot visibility. I ran upon some young guys that have been fishing there often, like every day, and they were fishing out in the open with a chug bug. They caught a few of the very small schooling fish but said sometimes the big ones will come up and bite. I saw them later and they had caught 15 or so but all small. They allowed that they had caught about 350 in the last month and a half. While talking to them, I had a good bite on a swimbait. The fish was strong and pulled drag but came unpinned shortly thereafter. Never saw it . I ended up with 4 . The Florida bass were at it again. After fishing a submerged pond levee with a swimbait, when I got close enough to see it, a bass bigger than the ones that I caught was down there looking at me and had evidently just watched the bait go by. Meanwhile Richard and Hal caught 47 at Beaverdam. This time of year the fishing up there really picks up.

I chose to fish in the morning and deer hunt in the afternoon. Thursday afternoon I went down to the private hole to make sure that the boat would be able to launch. I knew that with the river falling the private whole would also be falling. I was right, the boat was 10 feet away from the water. I cut off some logs and put them under the boat when it came off of the rack and pushed it to the water. Then I moved the rack over to the other side of the launching ramp. My alarm clock quit working this morning and I woke up an hour and a half late. By the time I got in the water it was eight. The extra sleep was a good thing because nothing was going on when I started fishing. By 10 I only had two fish but things started to pick up around 10:30. Once again the swim bait was what they wanted. The fish were biting it so lightly, I just started giving slack even after the slightest bump and then watching the line to see if it did something funny.  If it went sideways, I set the hook. It seemed by 12 things were over so I quit. I ended up with 13 and a few FOD’ s  of 2 3/4.

Lake Ferguson continues to fall rapidly. It was 14.6, down 8/10’s, today when Mickey and I met at the ramp at 3:30 this afternoon. The spot we caught them in on the last trip was the first stop. We really were suspicious the fish had moved again since the lake had fallen some more and the fish seem to be moving with the falling water. Our suspicions were correct as we only caught one or two anywhere close to what was the good spot. We tried along a long stretch of bank with just one here and one there.  Another place we caught some the other day was marginal at best. Close to it we caught a few but they were on the small side. At the end of that stretch, I slowed down the retrieve on my DT 6 almost to early spring speed and caught a couple out in the deep water relatively close to the boat. I could not figure out whether the fish were coming up from deep or just following the bait out before they hit. We tried another place catching a few but we just never hit the mother lode. We ended up with 14, one under our Lake Ferguson limit, and a FOD of 2 1/2. It may be some time before I go again, but when I do, I have a radical plan on how to find the fish a little more quickly. I will let you know if it works.

Thursday Mickey and I left the ramp at 11:30 with the lake at 16.3, down 1.4 from Tuesday when I had good luck. We went directly to Tuesday’s good spot but only were able to catch two small ones that reluctantly bit a worm. Right away, I thought a gar snipped my DT6 off and I waited for it to pop back up like it sometimes will. As I was fussing and tying on another bait, I saw a catfish just under the surface trying to get the DT 6 out of its mouth. I tried to get the boat hook out to save the bait but the boat blew too close and the fish left. The truth was I had tied a sorry knot and had not pulled on it to check. After the catfish episode, we tried the 70 bank with about the same luck as the first spot. After a couple of spots on the steep bank with no luck we stumbled onto a few fish in a place I haven’t had any luck in a long time. Mickey quickly caught the FOD , a 6 -2 on a DT 6.

We were still quizzical about where all those fish from the other day had gone. We went back to that spot and tried again but still nothing. Mickey looked down the bank and said “that looks like a slight point down there” so we went to investigate. We were sitting in 9 feet of water throwing into probably 4 feet. It was not too long before we had one, and then another all on a DT 6. The fish were of good size in the 2+ pound range. The action was pretty fast but the pressure really went up when we both caught a 5 pound fish at the same time. It was a great photo op but we were in a hurry because we wanted to catch some more of those 5’s. It reminded me of this old pic when Hal and I caught two biggies in Enid. This one will just have to do.

There was not much of a point and also not much of a rhyme or reason for the fish to be in that spot. It is such a nondescript spot you would never think of fishing there. They were three tenths of a mile from the spot they were in last Tuesday. I guess it makes sense that the water is falling and the fish are following it . We then went back to the old time spot and caught some more. One big one gave me the scold by jumping a foot out of the water with its mouth shut and threw the bait back at me. After that gave out, it was getting late and so we made a break for the ramp. I have two Shimano Citicas that I have had for a long time. One has always been better, as far as casting is concerned, than the other. Last fall I changed the bearings and some other parts and inadvertently swapped the rod the reels had been on. The bad one now was on the rod I use for a DT 6. The bad one would throw perfectly one time and fuzz up with a backlash on the very next cast. Under the cast  adjustment cap was a small piece of material like thin cardboard that I figured had to be the problem. I cut out a piece of plastic from a chemical jug that would be slick and fitted it to the hole in the cast control cap. Today I tested it and it worked perfectly. If I had not caught a fish it would have been a great day just for getting that reel fixed. But we caught some fish 32 to be exact with a 6-2, 5-2, 5-0, 4-3, and a 3-12  for a 24-3 for the best five.

Lake Ferguson was at 17.7 feet this morning when I launched at 6:30. There were already a good many boats in the lake and more were coming each minute. There is going to be a big crappie tournament Saturday I found out. I had top water fishing on my mind again.  When I stopped at a, new to me, sunken barge that was just sticking out of the water, I felt pretty good but the boats started coming two by two. About the time the waves subsided two more came. Although I did catch one on a cripple killer, it was obvious that top water was not going to work.  Where we have been catching most of the fish seemed the obvious place to go.  I only caught two there.

 More roseate spoonbills today. It’s funny how they like to line up down a log

For some reason today the gar were horrendous. There were two or three that I had to put the gar priest on and two more of gargantuan size. One of the big ones finally came up and did the crazy gar dance next to the boat and slung the DT 10 back at me. When I say big I am talking 5 feet long. The next big one did not spit it out and was firmly hooked in the corner of his mouth. There was no way I could get this one close enough for a gar priest lick. I got out my boat hook, AKA “gitter”, and when the gar came cruising by, I deftly took the hook part of the boat hook and snatched the DT 10’s hooks out of the gar’s mouth. It was time to move so I went to a spot nearby that I have caught a few fish in but never loaded the boat. There were small fish chasing minnows in some shallow water and I thought there may be some big ones close by. Sure enough a DT 6 rooted a couple out as did a Yozuri. The fish were chasing shad and were not getting the whole bait in their mouths. I lost 8 on the jump. The hooks were not dull, I checked. The hookups with a worm were better than the DT 6. When the fish left the shallows, I turned and cast to the deep water in the 15 foot range. Three straight fish on three casts and then nothing. I had to hunt up and down the bank and in and out to find them. When they were found you could catch 3 or 4 before they would disappear again. Even with all the waves, I ended up at 2:30 with 35 and a 4 -14 FOD.