Frank sent these pictures by email.

They were caught on back to back casts on a Hula Popper and both hit within 3 feet of the bank.  The fish were caught at Michigan City, MS in a pond. He said they caught “a whole passle of big ‘uns in the rain” “all on top”. A great day of fishing.

Now that the turkey season is over and I am not going to be abused by the gobblers for another year, I can turn my efforts to the fish.  I’m having to live vicariously through other peoples exploits. Going to try to change that. One of my favorite spots, the private hole, is getting some much needed water due to The River rise that will really give the fishing a boost after the water clears. The rise will help the river lakes too but too much high water will hurt the turkey hatch. Hopefully the water level will be like Goldilocks’ porridge, “just right”.

I’ve been sitting in the turkey woods thinking how good the fishing must be on Lake Monticello. It especially happens when there is no action or chance of it. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. So after being lucky and killing my limit (one), Jackson and I headed to Monticello. The water was 68 degrees and higher than normal, which is good because you don’t get stuck on many stumps. We started with topwaters on a shallow point. Caught one on the second cast but it was a striped bass. They continued to pester us for quite a while. Their population has increased on Monticello. Next we went to the lily pads with a Ribbit . We got some bites but none were really serious about eating it.  Just to make a long story short we caught two bass. Our FOD was just over 4 and was caught on a shallow running crankbait. The real FOD was caught by a man that was fishing behind us but was bed fishing. We watched him catch one that was 9 pounds. He weighed it, took its picture and released it. I thanked him for releasing it.

Monday afternoon, since the wind was blowing too much to turkey hunt, I went to the private hole fishing. Right off the bat, I made a cast to a Christmas tree that I had tied to a log in shallow water. I saw one hit my Booyah and miss. Then it happened again. I pulled out the spot remover shaky head and sure enough the fish gobbled it up and I set the hook. The fish went into the tree and when I tried to pull it out, the line snapped because I did not retie. Then the fish jumped trying to shake the hook. I was glad it did because I could see  it weighed about 2 pounds and not 6. Continuing around the hole, I broke out the cripple killer and tried to remember the lessons I learned from Mickey, the topwater master. The fish were cooperating well although there were a lot of misses. The killer has good hooks so they had better not come too close. Almost half way around, I caught one that had my spot remover hanging out of his mouth. Recovery number one. I got to a big log, always a good spot, and the wind  blew me around so my back was to the spot. One hit the killer, I set the hook, the fish jumped and when it went back down the hook abruptly came out. Estimated size 5 pounds. This was straight across the hole from my Jeep which I had parked within 15 feet of the water. Glancing across I saw a turkey, hen thank goodness, standing between the Jeep and the water. After It walked past the Jeep and kept foraging, it suddenly ran a few steps up the bank. I could not figure that out, but later saw a alligator steaming out into the center of the hole from that spot. Right now I’m wishing turkeys bad luck but I want to be the one dishing it out in the form of 3 inch magnum #6’s. I made it all the way around to the place I lost the big fish, and instead of the killer, I threw in the Booyah and surprisingly got a bite and landed the FOD that was 4-6. When one gets away, we always think it’s bigger than it is. 5 pound estimate, yeah. Recovery number two. It was an odd day. I caught a crappie on a topwater, a chain pickerel, 4 other black crappie on a Booyah and a 8-1 grinner. I ended up with 22 bass. No fish pictures because the phone ran out of juice. Charged it up a little and caught the sunset at the house.

I went to the Private Hole to replace the broken seat. That being accomplished, I stopped at another hole that I have never tried before. It is small and deep looking but I believe it is only about 6 feet deep, judging by how long it took my Booyah spinnerbait to sink to the bottom.  As I stood at the small landing, an alligator came over to see if I was good to eat.  It was just nosy but I figured it might be hungry after a long hibernation so I kept my eyes on it. At first I really didn’t have much luck, but when I reeled in a cast fast so I wouldn’t get hung up, a bass came up and hit.  After that, I began to bring it in fast and shallow and started to get bites. Many were missed, but as I started to hesitate just a tiny bit before setting the hook, the hookups got better.  I call that fishing a spinnerbait Jimmy Houston style. He is a  TV fishing personality that says if you can’t see your spinnerbait you are fishing too deep.  I can’t argue with him because he has a fishing show and I do not BUT I rarely fish a spinnerbait in that manner. I don’t giggle as much as he does either. When the landing spot was worn out, I noticed some fish moving down in a corner.  I couldn’t just walk down there due to a steep bank and now two alligators so I detoured up and through the woods to the corner. The bass in the corner were cooperative too. In about an hour I ended up catching 9, two of which I eyeballed at just South of 3 pounds.

After an uneventful opening morning turkey hunt on the Ides of March, I journeyed to the private hole to fish because the wind was too high to effectively turkey hunt. I caught 18 bass, 2 crappie and of course a grinner. I brought the crappie home for supper that night and left the grinner floating. The crappie and some of the bass were caught on a 1/4 oz Booyah spinnerbait. The other bass were caught on a shallow diving Rapala type bait that I found floating in Lake Monticello. I was going to use a rattling Rouge but looking at the hooks, I liked the ones on the found bait best. A couple of the bass hit it on top but most wanted it just under the surface. A photo of the bait.

I caught a few on a worm but only in places where anything else would get hung up. In one instance, I threw over a small stick, and when the bait hit, a tighteye hit it almost on top. When I set the hook with a little more force than usual, the seat back broke clean off. It was only due to catlike reflexes and fancy footwork that I didn’t end up sprawled in the back of the boat. The seat that broke was an old one that came on a tripod deer stand. I guess the sun finally took its toll. The other one was a donation from Mickey. Here you can see the broken one in the foreground.

Mickey and I went to Meridian to fish in his brother Greg’s lake Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday morning. Greg has been managing his fish with the objective of having a big bass lake. He takes out every bass he catches that is under 15 inches long. There are also 4 feeders placed around the 15 acre  lake and go off every 2 1/2 hours at 5 minute intervals. The lake is 13 years old and has bass, bream, threadfin shad and fathead minnows in it. Southern Pond Management has been his consultant. Whatever he’s doing is working as we caught 37 bass of which we kept 23 “culls”. Mickey and I caught a 4-6, 4-8, 4-0 and a 5-6 and had a bass in the 6 pound class ready for the net when the hook came out right beside the boat. Couldn’t count that one. Greg, on the other hand gave us a seminar, catching several in the 4 to 5 pound range and topped it off with the  7-14 pictured here. He also caught a 9+ a week or so ago.

As usual Mickey with a 5 pounder

Even I got in on the act

Most of the fish were caught on worms, although some were caught on Yozuris and even some on a DT – 10 and a crazy shad.  Some were caught shallow Sunday just before noon but that morning I caught one right under the  boat with the depthfinder reading 15 feet. Speaking of depthfinder, I saved some screen shots that were interesting. The first is a side scan shot showing two groups of shad ( center and upper left) with a few fish hanging around. The fish show up as elongated due to the slow speed of the boat, as you can see was 1 MPH. The second is a down image shot that shows just a swarm of shad with three fish hanging close by and an old log on the bottom in 13.6 feet of water.

The next one is a down image showing another shad swarm with 6 bass chaperones in 13.5 feet of water.

Needless to say all the bass we caught were well fed, fat and healthy. With this much food available I don’t know why in the world they bit an artificial bait. We had a great time.

I went to Lake Ferguson this morning and played hooky from church, which was probably my downfall. The gauge was at 29.8 feet and the starting water temperature was 46. Not to worry I thought, we caught them in Lake Chicot the other day when the water was the same temperature. The last time I was on Ferguson I caught a fish in some flooded cockleburs and this morning I found a large spot just full of them. The water was beautiful with 4 foot visibility. Unfortunately the fish were somewhere else. Not to worry again, I’ll just go to the 87 pound treeline. Here’s what I found there.

These coffeebeans are in water 10 to 12 feet deep. The whole Upper Lake is full of them. They are a big change and will make the fishing year interesting later on. I tried the treeline and tried in the coffeebeans too but no bites were to be had. A Booyah spinnerbait would not even get a bite until finally I felt a nip. On the retry I caught a tighteye that was as thin as a razorblade.  A couple of casts later, as the bait was coming to the surface close to the boat, I saw a small bass just come up and just put his mouth on it. It would not bite again. Staying in the same area, I managed to catch another skinny fish after a few casts. They were both in an area that gets cut off from the main lake when the water is low. Their food supply must have run out and they were hungry enough to bite. I even tried the cockleburs again on the way home. The water had warmed to 53 but still no fish there. Those two were it.  I was feeling kind of bad about my two fish day but when I got home and turned on the computer I saw that Kevin VanDam only caught 4 in the Bassmaster Classic.  After that I didn’t feel too bad.

It was foggy, cold, and windy when Jackson, Sam and I put in at Lake Chicot Friday morning at 7 a.m.. We did not go to what I thought was the best spot right off the bat, because before the wind blew too much, we wanted to explore another spot I saw when looking at Google Maps. Google  Maps is a great resource for looking at lakes you have never visited or places you have visited but wanted to know more about. After a short frigid ride, we started fishing, occasionally having to put our hands in our pockets to warm the feeling back into them. After catching only one in the prospective spot, we made the decision to make a break for what I thought was the best spot I visited last Sunday. It was not a great long ride but it was a cold one. I broke out two pairs of gloves kept in the boat for just such a day.  No problem in getting a taker for the extra pair. The water temperature was 46 degrees. We were fishing Booyah 1/4 ounce spinnerbaits and when we got a bite, it was with authority.  The water was 2 to 3 feet deep and most of the fish we caught were in what we could see as the open, outside the inundated  grass. In reality they were in the cover of vegetation that had been covered by the water. There was no pattern, just one here and there. The only place where we caught more than one was a grassy point where the wind had created a slight current coming around the end of it. Later in the day the wind subsided , the lake became slick and the sun came out, but as luck would have it, that was close to my hard leaving time due to an engagement later that night.  We ended up with 13 bass no biggies but some fat females with eggs. No photos. It was too cold.

I went to Lake Chicot today after going to early church. The water temperature was 48 degrees at 11:30 when I arrived and the wind was clipping at 13 MPH from the SSE.  Some spots have been on my mind for a while, so after I put in I went straight there.  The cypress trees that I wanted to fish were where I  had caught fish in the past and were only in 3 to 5 feet of water. No bites on the Booyah spinnerbait so I moved shallower. The lake is up and has inundated some of last years weeds. That along with some scattered cypress trees and knees looked like the perfect place.  I finally had one on but it lasted only seconds before it came unpinned. A couple of hours went by with not even a nip and I was in low cotton, already thinking up excuses to put on the Bitespot and even once thought about just skipping writing about this trip.  Finally a tighteye volunteered and I’ll tell you the fish smell beat the heck of the skunk I was beginning to get a whiff of. I caught it in some shallow water and soon another came from the same spot. That spot was small and soon ran out. When I moved, I arrived at a spot so shallow the trolling motor hit bottom and would go no further. There were some good looking weeds so before I left I hummed a sidearm cast across them and a bass boiled at it and missed. Three or four casts later it hit again and this time connected. It was a good healthy fish with black spots on its mouth and one on its fin.  Here’s its picture.

Thinking I might be on to something, I went through the trees and around the shallow spot to some more weeds I saw ahead. All the time I was thinking that this was just like the spot I started in. Shortly I caught this 3-13 FOD that had a pot belly full of eggs.

Not a giant, but I was impressed with her dedication to reproduction.  That spot ran out so I went back to the days starting point and sure enough caught a few there before dark. All the 7 fish today were caught in water 2 feet deep or less.

Today Jackson and I went to the private hole under the threat of rain.  We started with crankbaits, he with a Lucky Craft and I with a DT-6. Shortly, Jackson had the first of the day, a good, healthy, and pretty private hole bass.

You can see his Lucky Craft bait pretty clearly in the photo. Next he proceeded to catch the FOD, a nice 5 – 3 that we did not take a photo of because it was hooked deep and it took a long time to unhook. We wanted to return it to the water quickly. Things were looking pretty good when he made a cast and twitched the bait on top and one smacked it . I finally caught one on a Booyah and then it started to rain. We left the boat to sit in the truck and I finally figured when we were sitting in the truck we could be driving back to the cabin to get me some rain gear. Jackson had his. When we returned the rain had almost ceased and shortly we were able to fish again. Things had slowed down. I pulled out my shaky head and caught one and another on a Barry Provis special,a jighead with a swimbait tail and a wire coming out the bottom of the jighead with two willow leaf spinner blades on it. Jackson also added to the count but times were tough. This year I wanted to try to learn how to use a dropshot so I put one on and fished halfway around with it and did not even get a bite. We ended up with 7 when we quit at 3 p.m. The first two times at the private hole this year have produced 12 bass total. Last year the first four times 20, 16, 26, and 28 were caught.  Kind of a rough start.