This morning the sunrise was gorgeous but I didn’t see it fishing. I was walking down the road, trying to keep warm, and trying to hear a turkey gobble. Pretty quickly I heard one but it was waaay off, as Duke Morgan is prone to say when asked what he heard.

I got some good exercise too, to the tune of about a 3 1/2 to 4 mile walk.  Fishing started at 9:45.  Hal has been having good luck at Beaverdam with a swim jig so I started with one of those.  It was quickly discarded after two bumps and nobody home when the hook was set.  The bass that were biting were so small they were grabbing the trailer and missing the hook. The Booyah came next.  It caught some but it also got bumped too much to suit me so out came the shakey head with a baby brush  hog on the back.  I caught some on that combination until I had a fit of bad luck with missing bites.  Next I pulled out a DT-6 and started catching right off the bat.  So armed with a shakey head, a DT-6, and a Booyah, I circled the Garhole keeping everything under 13 inches, which were most of what I was catching. When the back ends started getting pulled off the baby brush hog, I switched to a small Zoom tube bait. I screwed in the tube nose to the small spring on the shakey head, then I snipped a small slit for the bottom of the hook and then put the hook point barely sticking out the top of the tube.  It worked well.  The 4-7 FOD was the first customer.

Those Garhole bass are really pretty.  I caught 35 in all. All of those under 13 inches, which were most of them, were invited to Willie’s house for supper.  They are close to being overpopulated so it’s important to keep as many of the small ones as possible and take them out. When Mickey cleaned the fish last week, he found a high percentage of the small fish we kept to have eggs. If all those small fish spawn, numbers could get out of hand quickly. Then there’s the River. Forecasts say it’s going to crest at 35 feet at Arkansas City and that will be close to getting in the Garhole.  If it gets in the numbers of bass in it now will be fine.