Lake  Monticello was extremely low and the water temperature was 76 degrees this morning.  Certain areas of the lake are hard to fish due to all the stickups.

I had no idea where or with what bait to start or even why I chose to got to Monticello considering the whippings it has handed out this year.  There were four main baits I wanted to try: a Ribbit Frog, a swimbait, a square bill crankbait, and a Phillips Cripple Killer topwater. The cripple Killer is the same size as a 3 1/2 inch Cordell Crazy Shad. You can’t buy the Crazy Shads anymore and I was hoping the Killer would be a substitute.  I started out with all the above. The Ribbit was the first to strike after a long period of nothingness. A nice 3 1/2 came out of the pads and hit it like he was hungry.

Not all the pads were in deep enough water to hold fish so as I was going from one group to another I put on the square bill. The first one used was  one of the new KVD 1.5s but it was small and difficult to throw with the rod I was using so I changed to a heavier “found” one that was a really good looking bait. It was used in the thick wooded area much the same as in the first picture.  The bait has a side to side wandering action and snagging was not as much as you’d expect.  It quickly caught three fish in a short 50 yard stretch. When they would bite I really didn’t know whether it was a fish or a stump so I just kept reeling until I felt a pull. The new hooks that had been installed did a great job and somehow none of the ones that bit escaped, even though they were wrapping around stumps and logs. I just  was lucky. The 4 3/4 FOD is in the photo. Note the good “found” bait hanging from his jaw.  There was one place where the little bass were so plentiful they were pests. They would keep you awake when you fished a Ribbit because you would get a bite every cast. Good to see a good spawn. They could not get the hook in the ribbit but the crankbait was another matter.

Fish from Monticello have been hard to come by for me this year so I took a lot of photos.

This afternoon Tyler Owens and I hit Lake Ferguson at 3:00. Tyler is Ralph’s 16 year old grandson and was the recipient of a fishing trip that I donated to the Saint James Episcopal Church Bazaar for the silent auction and Ralph purchased.  I have been waiting for the lake to get “right” before I took him because I really wanted him to catch a lot of fish. We stopped at the rockpile first with no results. About that time Mickey called me and told me where the  bass were schooling. We were on our way immediately.  When we got there, Mickey sent us one way and he and Ed King went the other. The water was about three to four feet deep in the stumps and the bass were chasing shad in several places along a quarter mile stretch. Tyler and I had to abandon our DT-6s for Rattletraps because of the water depth. It seemed they preferred the willow trees that were still alive and had leaves on them. It might have had something to do with the shade they provided.  After we had been there for a while, I got a call from Taff with another report of schooling activity in a completely different spot where he had caught 30, in addition to the 27 he had caught earlier. Everyone was catching fish.  Tyler and I stuck to our stretch of  bank most of the afternoon only once leaving to go to Mickey’s 70 spot but by the time we got there nothing much was happening. We went right back to our spot and caught some but it was beginning to play out. Even though it was getting late, there was one more spot I wanted to try.  Nothing was going on there and it looked like we were finished but the bass surfaced a few yards away. We went to them and started catching fish as the full moon rose. They finally slowed down enough for us to tear ourselves away and head for the ramp. We had invited many of the fish we caught to Tyler’s house for supper and had thrown some back. It is one of the few times I did not keep a close count but it would be safe to say we caught 45 or 50.  Here is Tyler with one of the larger fish which he seemed to catch more of than I did.

It was a great pleasure fishing with such a nice young man.  I hope he had as much fun as I did.

Click on the image to enlarge it. The sidefinder was looking out to the right side 70 feet. I have circled some of the fish and underwater features for a little more in depth explanation of the sidefinder view. The screen is scrolling from the top to the bottom so what you see at the top is what was just passed over. The shadow was where the tree blocked off the sound that the sidefinder uses to “see” what is under the water much the same as a tree trunk would block off the light and make a shadow above the water.  The sidefinder allows you to “see” what is in a spot without actually driving over it and scaring the fish. The depth of 1.1 feet is inaccurate due to the sensitivity being turned up so as not to miss anything . The depth is really 3.5 feet . If the depth is over 5 feet it reads correctly at that sensitivity setting.

Gayden Bishop sent a fish recipe that sounded really good and I tried it last night with 12 small bass fillets (under 13 inch fish).  It turned out well with only 3 small pieces left, so well that I decided it should be shared on the Bitespot.

Ingredients:

4-6 white fish fillets (I used 4 really meaty cod fillets, which were about 3in x 5in)

3 inch piece of fresh ginger (peeled and cut into chunks)

1 or 2 hot chilli peppers  (I used 2 very small, quite spicy birds eye chillies)

4 or 5 medium garlic cloves

4 tablespoons lemon juice

A few grates of finely grated lemon zest

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 heaping teaspoon ground cumin

1 heaping teaspoon ground cilantro (or coriander)

1 tablespoon water

Salt and pepper to taste

Place all ingredients except fish in the Cuisinart and pulse until smooth. Place fish in a bowl and pour the mixture over the fish, making sure that each fillet is happily dredged. Cover and let sit for 30 minutes (on the counter or in the fridge—I like to do it at room temp).

Pre-heat the oven to 350F. After the fish has marinated, line a roasting tin with tin foil, arrange the fish fillets in the middle of the tin foil (close but not touching) and pour marinade over the top. Cover with another sheet of tin foil, and roll the edges together so you have one big parcel. Bake in the oven for 25-30 mins (depends on the size of your fish!).

Spoon the juice over the fish and serve. Works with chicken breasts too.

This afternoon Mickey and I met at the wharf at 3:00 and set sail onto Ferguson with it standing at 23.7 feet.  We started at the rockpile and on one of the first few casts I came back with a 4 – 2 on a Poe’s crankbait. Fish were breaking all around but there were no more in the size range of the first one. There were stripes in the middle of the lake and black bass all around the sides.  We caught some of the schooling bass that were up to 2 1/2 pounds but generally the schooling fish were frustrating. Here one minute and gone the next.  A Yozuri did pretty well with the schoolers.  When we went to our other spot, the bass  were clowning down there too. We chased fish all afternoon catching them on Yozuris, DT – 6s, DT – 10s, and even topwaters. Mickey caught two at one time on a crazy shad.  After he got them in the boat, the back hook of his bait came off. It was a bait that he had  purchased in the 70s.

We went back and forth on the same stretch for most of the rest of the afternoon. You never could figure when you were going to catch one because they  were all over the map.  Some shallow and some deep. When they would chase shad in the shallow water, I would ease the boat closer and get Mickey to throw the crazy shad. I just enjoyed watching him work his magic with it.  We ended up with 52 bass and a few stripes. Some of the stripes were giants and the rest were babies. There were none in the middle. It’s going on in Lake Ferguson.

Hal burned them up one day recently when he caught 120 in one sitting from 7 to 12.  Then he went home and got Stef and came back later that afternoon where she caught 13 and he caught EDIT: 16 making his total for the day 136 . The FOD was 3 3/4.  They caught them wading on Beartail Creek somewhere close to Coldwater. The first 40 were caught on a spinnerbait, almost on every cast. The next day he found some running water in a beaver pond and caught another 30 in another spot. If it were not for catch and release, he’d have to buy another freezer and he would be still be cleaning fish today.

The wind was out of the North and the sky was clear this morning as Jackson and I set out on Lake Chicot. We headed back to the same old places where we have been catching fish but they were not very fired up about feeding. We caught a few small ones on the usual suspects, Yozuri, Red Eye Shad, and various small shallow running crankbaits.  When we had exhausted all of our spots, we went over to the deep side and ran the side scan depthfinder to see if there was any structure out from the docks and close to the drop off. The side scan is pretty hard to see in the boat with the glare from the sun so I saved some on the SD card to bring home and look at on the computer screen. Here are two from the deep side.

If you click on them they will enlarge and you can better see what I am describing.  In the first one you can see two docks with a few fish around them and scattered fish in between. Stretching from the top to bottom on the left-center of the screen you can see a line where the drop off starts. There also  appears to be something in the upper right between the docks with three fish on it. The second one shows a dock that we passed with something  that was almost under the boat when we passed over. It has small fish on the left end and one big one on the right end. Then from the dock to toward the top of the screen is all kind of underwater structure with a few fish on it.  After we did the depthfinder work we returned to our spots to try again. At two it was nothing but at the third there were some fish. The next photo is of part of that spot. The depth says 1.1 but it’s more like 3.8. I could adjust the sensitivity and make it read right but then the fish would not show up. That happens only in water under 5 feet.

You can see a cypress tree on the bottom left that is cutting off the sound and making what looks like a shadow. On the right side are submerged small willows and weeds. They make an underwater point right behind the tree. Also behind the tree are some fish that I would bet are bass and there are several more toward the top of the screen. We caught some fish here with a tailspinner and a worm and  ended up with 40 bass total.

This afternoon on Ferguson, Mickey and I found the bass in two main places.  We caught the fish in spurts, two or three at a time. It was obvious that the school was moving around but since they were not hitting on top you did not know where it was.  When you happened to throw where it was, the fish bit with gusto. We caught 12 from 4:00 to 7:30, with no really big fish. We got word of some guys catching a boatload in the last few days however. They caught the schools hitting on top and threw a 200 Bandit into them. We caught ours today on a DT-6 of course.

John Eddleman took his grandson and his son on a fishing trip to his private spot and had a great fishing trip. Here is his grandson.

The grandson had a pretty good coach and was pretty good at catching too.

It was their annual fishing trip and fish fry. I think they caught enough for the whole crowd.

Looks like everybody had fun.

Jackson and I convened at the ramp on Lake Chicot at 5;45 this morning with ideas of a repeat of our 103 trip. He fished there yesterday with his son and caught 15, so we were worried about the two good spots Jackson had found being worn out. Sure enough, we only caught one or two in both spots.  We decided to go look for the squirrel log where he had seen the bass hit at the squirrel as it ran down the log for the bank.  As we arrived the bass surfaced chasing shad. We caught about 15 there before the fish quit/moved (you never know which). Keeping on down that bank we ran into some more activity where we caught 18. Most of the fish to this point were caught on a small rattletrap and a Little John shallow crankbait. Leaving there we returned to the log where we didn’t catch any or many, I can’t remember which. After that we went to the bridge over the lake and some docks. The docks held a few fish which would bite a worm, or in Jackson’s case a creature bait.  As we returned to try our new spots again we saw schooling activity about 100 yards away, so the correct choice above must have been “moved”.  I had on a Scrounger jig head with a Calin grub on behind.  They loved the scrounger, and seemed to hang on to it better than anything else I had fished with all day.  We ended the day with 64 bass, mostly small and a FOD of 3 pounds. Another fun day on Lake Chicot.