At 5 p.m. I started fishing this afternoon on a rising river.  Usually I do not have great luck when the river is rising but I figured the fish have to eat whatever the river is doing.  Two bit a swimbait right off the bat over an old sunken barge and after trying some other spots two more bit there, one on the swimbait and one on a worm. I caught one other one on a worm in another place and I quit at 8 p.m.. FOD was 3 1/4 and I had one other just over three.  One of the places I had good luck in the other day had so many shad in it there’s no way a fish would hit an artificial bait. Just too much of the real thing. I’m going to have to go somewhere else until the river starts to fall.

Lake Ferguson is rising slightly but I went there this morning early to try to have a little topwater fun.  I had missed a couple of small ones and was fishing near some vines when a bass about 2 pounds hit the bait hard and went for the vines where it hung up and managed to break the line. It took my Nipididdee with the big hooks.  A few small ones were all that cooperated this morning and about noon I went to this culvert where some more small ones bit.

I went to the places where Friday they were really biting but the fish were not in the exact same location today. They would be to one side or the other of the spot .  I managed to catch the 3 – 6 FOD in one however. It was obvious the bite was getting better in the afternoon. Friday I had a silver carp to power away with a DT – 10 and was lucky to get the last one in the Wal Mart yesterday to replace it.  I lost that DT – 10 twice today, once to a gar and got it back, and once to a fish that hung me and it in a bush. I used both of my plug retrievers and never touched the bait. The fish was still on the hooks! Finally I gave up and broke it off. The day ended with 14 fish of which 4 were 3 or better. The silver carp are thick in Lake Ferguson and must be tearing up the commercial fishermen’s nets because there were dozens of them floating around on the lake today.

In preparation for a fishing trip with Craig and his daughter Bland, I went to Fergy  at 1:30 p.m. because they were coming at 4 p.m.. The idea was to find a place where Bland could catch some stripes and lots of them. I had heard of a culvert with running water and knew several other places where luck had been had in the past but I needed to solidify a plan.  The second place I went blew the scouting trip wide open as I caught a 5 – 2 on about the second cast. A 4 -14 came next and then a 3 3/4 and a couple just under 3. All were on a DT -10. I got back on the stripe quest but black bass kept trying to divert my attention, including one more 4 pounder. I caught 10 before 4:30 when I picked them up at the wharf. We went to  some good places but “THE” spot did not pan out.  Bland  caught some stripes but not one every cast as I had planned. Craig caught 2 black bass and a stripe or two as well as Bland catching some stripes. I caught Bland. In making one of my hero casts, the bait landed in a tree. When I pulled it out it came whizzing back and I heard it hit Bland. Thank goodness it stuck in shorts only and no flesh. When the bait got hung up after that, she was noticeably nervous, and I can’t blame her.  The FOD.

Willie and I returned this afternoon to the scene of the crime . Amazingly no one was perched in the spot, but it was not long before boat after boat showed up.  It’s a pitiful comment on “sportsmen” when you have to defend your spot.  Those people would cast over your boat if they thought they could catch a fish there. It was especially bad after I caught a couple of 4 pounders right in front of them.  We continuously had to position our boat just to be able to keep the interlopers out. No regard whatsoever for anyone except themselves. The stripes were not there as thick as the other day when we caught more than 75 according to Willie’s count.  More like 5 to 7 today. The DT – 6 was not working today but I caught 6 bass on a shakey head, including a 4-4, a 4-14, and a 5-2. The rest were around 3, for a top 5 around 20 pounds.

A boat had just pulled out of the first spot that I stopped at Tuesday morning on Lake Ferguson and had pulled into the second spot that I had planned to stop. The first place produced a two pounder on the Nipididdee with the new hooks and modified spinners. From there I poked around a few places, catching a few but they were mostly small.  In some places I never cut the motor off, just motoring over the spot with the depthfinder doing the work. When the river comes down just a few more feet, those places will get hot. When I came back by the second spot I had planned to fish the boat was gone and I pulled in. The first one I caught was a spotted bass, I think. Contrast  it with the bass photo later in this post.

Caught some others there, one @ 5-0, and a lot of stripes ( white bass ).  For the morning 9 bass and a lot of stripes, all of which I threw back. When I arrived home at noon, Willie fussed at me for throwing back all those fish, so I made a deal with him. We would go fishing that afternoon and keep all the stripes, but would have to throw back all the black bass. At a little after 4 p.m. we hit the lake. As luck would have it, with only two stripes in the ice chest, Willie caught a black bass about 3 pounds.  You just do not realize how much it hurts Willie to throw back a fish, so after a photo the bass went in the ice chest.  Note the difference in appearance of the fish in the first and second photos.

He caught one weighing 4 pounds later that we did release but with much pain, suffering, and conversation.  I was concentrating on filling the ice chest with stripes, but as it started to fill, my concentration shifted to the black bass. The black bass were not in the same area of our spot as the stripes, so we could fish for either depending on which side of the boat we were fishing on. I caught 8 black bass  on consecutive casts with a DT – 6, and managed to catch 7 more over the course of the afternoon with both the DT – 6 and a Bass Magic 4 1/2 inch swimbait. Most of the fish were between 3 and 4 pounds but one was 5 – 2. Daily total 25 bass. After the lake falls like it has recently, my “found baits” collection always increases markedly. Today there were three new additions, two pictured here. UPDATE: In looking at the Bass Pro catalog, I discovered that the crankbait pictured was a $16.99 Luckycraft. Ouch for somebody!

I don’t think I’ll even have to put new hooks on them.  The “found” baits really come in handy in Lake Ferguson with all the gar that can clip you for your good crankbaits in a second, and all the silver carp that can get foul hooked and break your line with their tail.  The “found” baits have caught a lot of fish for me. This is longer than most of my posts but it relates a fun day on Lake Ferguson. Last picture sums it up.

Willie said this morning that he cleaned fish until 12:30 last night.

I met Hal Friday at Enid for a day of fishing. We had not fished together in a long time so I was really looking forward to it.  The MDWFP fishing report said the bass were being caught on the points of the lake, and when we put in there was confirmation of that in the position of the boats. One boat was sitting on my favorite pile of rocks with no intention of moving soon. The major feeding period was in the afternoon, a good thing, since it took us a good time to get a pattern figured out. No fish was caught on a point and I can assure you I made Hal try a lot of them. We found the fish around cypress trees and bushes in 4 feet of water on the main lakebank. That was mentioned in the report too, but for some reason, I just glided right over that part. Most were caught on worms of some sort. Spinnerbaits and also a swim jig accounted for some too.  We ended up with 28 including the FOD of 6 – 1 or 2. I can’t remember which the scale settled on. What I can remember is it was hooked on the tongue patch and when I stuck my thumb it its mouth and lifted it from the water, I used only two fingers to remove the hook. It was barely hooked and I was lucky to get it in the boat.

I had a strange thing happen.  Just having retied because of a roughed up line (8# test Gamma copolymer), I made a cast and on the backcast the bait came loose. When I inspected the end of my line I found the knot had come loose.  Sometimes I tie the Trilene knot without my glasses, so I figured it was a slip up due to a misstied knot. But after it happened two more times in short order, I was scared senility had set in and I had forgotten how to tie the knot.  I made Hal stop fishing, we put on our glasses, and he watched me tie the knot. It was tied correctly except for cinching it down very tight and using my fingernail to push the wraps up tight together. No more problems after that.  When we left there was a boat,the same one or maybe another, still occupying my favorite rock pile.

This morning I received 38 spam messages in the comment section.  Some were in a script that I could not read, most from the same user name, but all with different  IP addresses.  A few spams I can deal with, but 38 is over the line, and 6 have come in since I deleted the 38.

I have decided to not allow comments. Most people know the email address and can comment by email if they want to. I plan to reopen the comments after a short while to see if the storm has passed.

Thanks for viewing the Bitespot.

Since the morning bite was so good the last time there, I arrived at Eagle Lake at daylight.  When I arrived at the lily pad spot there was no visible activity.  I only caught two early on a Ribbit and the ones that did bite were tepid at best.  Going down one of the slightly sloping banks, I threw everything at them but the kitchen sink, but with no luck.  Caught some there last time but…There is aquatic grass everywhere that is less than 8 to 10 feet deep which makes it hard to fish effectively.  I remembered that a lipless crankbait works well in that situation, so I pulled out one of my “found” baits, brand unknown. Caught one on the first cast with it. Since I had solved the puzzle, I prepared to load the boat with fish and, of course, it didn’t happen. Here is what the bait looked like.

There are many docks on Eagle Lake, so after failing to find the secret, I decided to try to fish them. The grass made it next to impossible. Between the docks there is grass to varying degrees. There were also many schools of small threadfin shad. As I traveled from one dock to another, a bass blasted up through the grass to get a shad. Out came the Ribbit which is about the only thing that can be fished effectively in that situation. Bites were slow in coming but when they did the bass would butt the bait with its head and knock it out of the water as the fish came out of the water too. Then when the bait came down in the grass the bass couldn’t find it.  I had noticed that about noon the bite had started to crank up.  It was also hot as Hades and a thunderstorm was brewing in the distance, all signs that things were looking up.  A school surfaced in the grass between two docks and in 20 minutes there were four fish caught  and three bites missed.  I left for a few minutes expecting a school between all the docks, but when reality set in, I returned to the spot and caught one more, making nine with a FOD of 3 1/4 for the day.

Mickey gave such a good topwater demonstration Saturday, I had to come home and modify one of my topwaters to try to get close to matching his. I chose a Nipididdy . First the propellers had to be straightened to catch more water. The original hooks were terrible, so I changed them out with some a lot bigger. They were so big, I just hoped the bait would float. Here is what the finished product looked like.

It looked good to me, now if it will just produce.  The bait worked great, walking the dog and making that little “chirp” all while almost sitting in one spot.  Here is what happened.

One scarfed it right off the bat and didn’t have a chance with all those big hooks. Grand Lake has a lot of cypress trees and also a rock bank with a good many docks. Jackson and I had a pretty tough time to start even with one on top right off the bat. We caught a few along on top and on spinnerbaits.  We fished around the docks with shallow crankbaits, spinnerbaits and worms or even a tube.  We caught the 4 – 10 FOD on a DTF – 3 Rapala crankbait off of a dock. Jackson had one even larger follow his out from another dock but it would not bite. Later in the day the rear propeller was pulling out of my modified topwater so rather than lose the hardware I changed to “the clown”, a Spook Jr with a shiny red head and a gold body. It caught some too right away.

The Clown will walk the dog and has a single rattle that clicks and makes a great attracting noise.  We had a good day ending up with 14 and getting a lot of casting practice under all the cypress limbs. Great debut on Grand Lake.

Mickey and I made our first casts at probably 6:15 this morning. His with a chrome crazy shad and mine with a Booyah spinnerbait. The water temperature was 81 and the visibility was a foot to 15 inches. Mickey is the master with the crazy shad. He makes it chirp and dance all while sitting in the same place.  The photo is of the first one he caught.

It seemed they were biting right off the bat. We caught 12 by 10:15 and when we called one of our friends to brag, we did not get another bite for three hours.  Just goes to show my daddy was right when he said ” Mr. Brag always loses his tail”. We had COFODs, as we each caught one that tipped the scales at 3 1/2 pounds exactly. One is pictured here with the crazy shad that caught it.

I got a good laugh every time one hit the crazy shad because they were hitting hard and biting like they meant it. We ended up with 16 fish.