This is the view that welcomed me Wednesday at Buck Chute in Eagle Lake. There were acres of pads with grass underneath. In the background is where the tornado that hit Yazoo City came over the levee and wrecked a wide area of trees.

Of course, the first bait out of the tackle bag was a Ribbit frog.  After a few minutes I had a 4 – 0 volunteer.

The volunteers continued coming all morning. Some were handled well and some made a monkey out of me. That seems to happen a lot with a Ribbit.  After missing three or four bass in a row, one hit and took the frog down, I set the hook only to have the frog squirt up to the top of the water. Mad, I reeled in fast to cast again, but on the way in, the fish hit again. Somehow I was composed enough to let it take the Ribbit down again before setting the hook, but the result of the hookset was the same as before. Mad again, I reeled in again, and again the fish took the frog, this time right at the boat. To let it have the bait I had to stick my rod down into the water. When I set the hook that time the bass ended up in the boat. They bit on top from early to 11:30. I moved out of Buck Chute and fished the edge of the grass along the bank where I caught a 5 – 10 on the Ribbit which was the FOD.  When it was obvious the topwater bite was off I switched to a swimbait.  I figured it would be more weedless than anything else and would work in the clear water. One small one on the swimbait. Eleven fish for the day which ended at 1:30.  Alligators were everywhere. A beautiful lake with plenty of grass that is a little more difficult to fish but clears the water and provides places for the small fish to hide.  Eagle Lake had a good spawn this year as evidenced by the crowds of small bass that followed the bait back to the boat on almost every cast. The last picture is the aftermath of this good day, all the used Ribbits.

My friend Craig Tucker is an avid trout fisherman, and although I usually post bass information here, the trout are going to get some space. The first and second photos are of a cutthroat caught in March in the Norfolk tailwater.

How about the gorgeous color of that fish ?  They caught these on some flies they tied themselves to match the hatch. The next photo is of a Norfolk brown caught either the same time or a few weeks later.

The last photo is of Craig’s friend Jimmy Avery with a beautiful rainbow trout.

Bass are beautiful to me but I’ll have to say the trout have the most beautiful colors.

Lake Ferguson was at flood stage this morning but was slick as glass with almost no wind.

The water was clear with a 4 foot visibility. A lot of good looking places to fish but nobody home. I used clearwater baits, a jig, Ribbit, Booyah, and a swimbait.  Finally caught 2 on a Ribbit, one in 27 feet of water in the trees and one in 3 feet of water on the edge of the meadow. Go figure. When the lake starts to fall, it’s going to get good.

The chocolate milk look was still there on Wolf this morning .

The photo does not do the water color and clarity, or lack thereof, justice.  The Yazoo River is backing in to the lake due to an also high Mississippi River. A man I spoke with said it was rising about 4 inches a day.   I started in the same place as the first time I visited Wolf this year but not many fish were cooperative there. It was mainly out by the big cypress trees. The second place was better than the first in terms of fish but not water clarity. I beat the banks with a spinnerbait that had some thump to it.

The one I used was a “found” bait that I put a special bend on the wire so the little balls that keep the blades in place would themselves stay in place. Note the strange shape of the blades. It made a great vibration which was needed in the muddy water.  The fish were very shallow, 12 inches or less, and very close to cover. We’re talking right up on the bank. The bite picked up noticeably at around 10 oclock and from then until about 2:30 it was full bore. The fish would bite earlier, but would not get the hook in its mouth. During the period they did not miss as much. I kept up with bites missed for a while but the numbers overwhelmed  me later on. Just guessing, I’d say two bites for each fish. SHADE  was very important in the middle of the day.  If scattered trees were in shallow water the fish would be in the shady spot. Under docks were good places too. I had a Senko on a shakey head for a go back bait if one missed. A few were caught that way but many would not hit the second time.  I ended up catching 44 bass  and one crappie with a FOD of 3 – 1.

Wolf Lake is a long, 15 miles by GPS,  narrow body of water.  The pleasure boaters there  seem to like the large inboard ski boats that make a large wake.  There was too much traffic for me there today. I can only imagine the weekend.  You might be able to dodge some of the pleasure folks by going to the extreme East end on the East side of the bridge there. The water is a little clearer there too.

Lake Jackson was the destination again this morning.  The moss has grown rapidly since the last time and has become an impediment to fishing.  The main impediment was I couldn’t get the fish to bite like they really wanted to eat my presentation. The first thing of interest I came upon was a large decaying alligator. It looked as if it had turned to jelly. I’m really glad the wind was blowing the other way.

Right after the alligator, I spied a large brown hawklike bird perched on a dead cypress limb. It was soon joined by another on the same limb. When the second one alighted the limb it shook the whole top of the tree.  They were immature bald eagles. I came to within 40 yards and not wanting to scare them off, I went back to go around.  Then they flew. I thought the boat had frightened them but as they flew off a mature eagle came by with a fish in its clutches. Then another mature eagle came by. It had all the makings of a family breakfast.

It was good to have all the diversions because the fish weren’t biting very well.  No bites on a Ribbit. The only fish was a humpback 2 -13 on a swimbait. There were some other bites on the swimbait but none hung on except for about a 3 pound grinner that escaped right at the boat. Thank goodness for the escape because a grinner just starts to fight when he gets in the boat.  In looking at my hook afterward. the grinner had bent the point at a 30 degree angle. I quit at 10:30.

Jackson and I have been on a lily pad tour for the last two days. Thursday we went to Lake Monticello and Friday we fished Cane Creek near Star City. At Monticello a few bass were in the pads but not enough for me to go back just to fish a Ribbit. The pads were blooming and beautiful.

We started out with Ribbits and had the early morning topwater bite going but not very strong. There were a good many airballs and misses until the 4 pound + FOD came along and tried to kill it. That’ll get your pressure up.

After the topwater bite gave out we tried swimbaits and caught a few. I had one put the scold on me. When it bit the line seemed to be around a root and when I set the hook it broke. The fish then jumped three times trying to shake the bait out of its mouth.  We tried a variety of different baits. Here’s one Jackson caught on a small Strike King crankbait.

Note the bait hanging in front of his glasses. It seemed we could catch the bass with the swimbaits on the secondary points. One fish had a large worm and a hook in its mouth. The large worm was actually down its throat and the only way we knew it was there was the line was still attached.  The fish was saved from gastric distress. We caught 7 at Monticello, 5 of which were three pounds or better. On to Cane Creek.

This accidental photo gives an idea what Cane Creek looks like. I was handing the phone/camera to Jackson when it went off and took this photo. The first fish was caught on a spinnerbait out in the stumps. The frog bite was again rather slow early but around 10:30 got hot.  Our hookup ratio was good to start but soon went South. It quickly got almost comical as we lost fish almost any way you could imagine. During the major period the fish were hitting the baits so hard sometimes to miss completely. The drought finally broke and we caught a few, this being one of them.

The next photo is of one I caught that had some black markings. The black circle behind the eye reminded me of the dog in the “Little Rascals”.

A true black bass. After the frog bite died we caught a few more in the stump fields with a Booyah spinnerbait. We finished the day with 12 and a FOD of 3  – 12.

The water temp in Lake Jackson on the North side of the dam was 67 degrees this morning when I started fishing. The coontail moss and the other grass is just below the surface. A little later in the year it will be all the way to the top. It looked perfect for a Ribbit frog.

You would think by the picture there would be a bass under every yard of that moss. It took me a while to figure out they were around the places where the moss was scattered.  When they decided to bite, they bit with gusto, knocking the tar out of the Ribbit. If they missed the first time, they would nail it the second time. The fish were a true black bass, almost black in color due to the clear water. Later on, I noticed the fish would only follow the frog and hit it if you stopped it or let it sit.  The scum frog came out then. The hooks were not sharp enough to suit me and after one escaped getting hooked it went back in and a swimbait came out. At first I used a Netbait 4 inch swimbait but changed later to a bass magic 4 1/2 inch one because the tail gave more of a thump. It was just like fishing a spinnerbait except it was more weedless and the moss would not bother it as much.  The Ribbits accounted for 4 and the swimbaits 3 for a total of seven before 11:00. The FOD was 3 1/4 shown here.

The wind was blowing from the start and finally, I think it was what made the fish quit hitting on top. There were a lot of birds that you do not usually see. Black crowned night herons,  anhingas, and some red breasted mergansers, I think, a pair sitting on a cypress limb just like some wood ducks.  Lake Jackson is a really neat place and would be a great place to go fish if Fred Abide hadn’t already been down there and caught all the fish.

The Garhole gets its name from this alligator gar that lived there until the mid 1960’s.The gar now resides over the fireplace in the Catfish Point mess hall.  I went there this morning to see if I could catch a bass on a Ribbit frog. The water was very clear with a visibility of 5 feet.  The garhole has a lot of silver carp in it,  some coontail moss and some pennywort, all complements of flooding by the river.The coontail and the carp are both reasons the water is so clear. The carp are filter feeders and the moss filters the water too. Clear water causes the fish to have dark markings and they  look a lot better to me. I don’t know why I look so happy. Must have been concentrating on aiming the camera. I caught that one on a soft swimbait as were most that I caught today. I also used a hard swimbait, a shellcracker, but none of the bass today were big or hungry enough to bite it.  I had some to follow it but none messed  with it. Caught fish on two kinds of swimbaits, a Ribbit, a Rage Eliminator, and a worm. I used a 4 inch Netbait swimbait for most of the day and the bream gave me fits biting on the tail.  For the day 17 bass were caught and the FOD was 3 3/4. Jackson had loaned me his 35 pound recurve bow with a fish arrow to take care of some of the silver carp.  I tried to shoot a few but they always faded away when they saw movement.  My accuracy was not much either. The string was hurting my fingers and at the house I had one of those finger saving tabs so I set off to get it. On the way there, I thought about a .22 rifle with open sights that was more accurate than the bow.  When I returned with the rifle, I found the fish knew the right depth to keep the bullet from hurting them. No silver carp died today by my hand unfortunately, but just wait until next time.

Cane Creek is between Gould and Star City Arkansas.  It’s a 83 mile drive that took an hour and 35 minutes. I say all this because when you go to that much trouble you expect results.  It gets light at 6:00 and I was out casting then.  The lake has acres and acres of lily pads and looked like a perfect place to use up some Ribbits.  Last year Jackson and I fished it in June which I thought was too late in the year.  The first week in May should be just right or so I thought.  It took an hour plus today to get a bite.  I kept on fishing and the bites were few and far between. Every bite on the Ribbit came outside of the pads, usually about 5 feet out. I don’t know whether they came out of the pads or were hanging out outside the pads.The fish were not hesitant to bite because they were slamming the frog. The FOD, a 3 – 10, actually jumped out of the water and came down on the bait.. At 11:00 the wind had picked up and was blowing hard making it difficult to fish the Ribbit in the pads in the middle of the lake.  It was not the waves, for the pads kept the water relatively smooth but you could not hit your target, and if you did hit it, the wind would blow a bow in your line and have your bait speeding off to the side. I retreated to the lee shore for some wind relief but there were no fish there, so back to the middle. I was ready to quit, but not wanting to accept defeat, I had on a Booyah spinnerbait and started throwing it around all the submerged stumps.  A bite right off the bat may have been the “old Indian trick” but I continued to throw it and caught two more small bass eventually.  Five bass for the early day was not too sporty in my opinion.  I never had the motor over and idle today due to all the stumps in that lake.  If you go there, it’s best to go in a shallow draft boat because of the stumps.  I saw two men in a large bass boat who were idling and hitting stumps that looked like they were going to damage the boat. The water temp started at 72 and went to 77. Visibility was about 2 1/2 feet in spots.  I do not think I’m going back soon.

I have a lifetime supply of Ribbits and wanted to use some of them up in Monticello’s lily pads.  I started out on a spot that I don’t get too many chances to fish because usually the wind is blowing there. Caught two pretty quickly but then hit a dry spell with no bites. Then I hit a hot spot and caught two on consecutive casts.  I think those two were guarding fry because they aggressively attacked the Ribbit. Then the drought returned as far as the Ribbit  was concerned so I pulled out a swimbait and caught one pretty quickly and had another follow it to the boat.  They were in 8 to 10 feet of water. The water was extremely clear with 5 to 6 foot visibility, the water was  calm and the sun was bright so you could see anything behind your bait.  I tried some more Ribbit spots but no bites so the swimbait got the call again and continued to pick up one here and there.  Some of the pads are thin and not as developed as usual.  I don’t know if that is the reason the bass were not in the pads .  I feel all the sight fishing has affected them too. It’s the first of May and they are already going for the deep water. I was really disappointed because fishing with a Ribbit is so much fun.  Eleven bass today with a FOD of 4 -5 and one other 4.

I talked to Bill Walker the other day and he has been using the rear end of a Ribbit as a jig trailer. It sounded good so today, during the drought, I rigged one up with the rear of a torn up Ribbit.  It had great action and slowed the fall of the jig. Here is a photo.