Jackson and I went to Monticello this morning knowing the weather forecast was for 15 to 25 mile per hour winds. Our first spot was shallow with lily pads so we tried with Ribbits and Booyah spinnerbaits. Our success was limited but it was still early. We finally caught two  but it was just not going on there so we moved. At the next spot we  were making our approach across a shallow underwater point that the wind was blowing across. I had on a swimbait, got a bite, and came out with a large stripe. Hoping a largemouth was in with the stripes we continued to pound the point. You could feel bites but the stripes would not swallow the bait like the first one did. When we reached the shallow water, we broke out the Ribbits and the bass would bite like they wanted it but the problem was with me. After several bites no fish made it to the boat. We tried the first spot again and caught a few small ones. After that we tried some other places but the wind was too tough. With a few drops of rain beginning to fall we called it quits. there were 10 small bass and 2 stripes. The FOD followed Jackson’s Ribbit to the boat, looked him in the eye, bit the bait, and got the frog snatched out of his mouth. The fish missed getting in the boat but was the largest one we saw all day.

Met Jackson at the landing this morning about 9:30 and started fishing. We started in deep water first and had no luck whatsoever. After a long time without any action we went shallow and quickly caught one on a Booyah. I felt like we had it figured out but the bite went bad again. We tried and tried, mostly with spinnerbaits but nothing. Tom came out on the lake later and caught some shallow on a lizard, 4 or 5 I think. Jackson just purchased a Lowrance gen 3 depthfinder and has it mounted on the console. I was looking at it all day and I liked what I saw, except for the fact I didn’t see many fish on it that I thought were bass.

Went to the private hole Saturday about 10:30.  I could see the fish but could not make them bite. Water had warmed up 5 degrees since the last time I was there but that did not help. Here they are 25 feet down with the shad.

Click on image to enlarge so you can see all the bass and shad. I quit and went to rebuild a turkey blind that had been washed away by the high water.

This morning Jackson and I went to Lake Enterprise for another try. Again we tried deep where we were successful in the past. We used deep divers, jerk baits, and heavy spinnerbaits. The spinnerbaits were allowed to go to the bottom and rolled slow, staying in contact with the bottom. The day was balmy but the fish were not getting that warm feeling. We only had two bites one on a shadow rap deep and one on a heavy spinnerbait just as it came up to the boat. The best part of the day was picking up the Whopper Plopper top water bait that Jackson purchased for me in Monroe. Now the mighty question is where to next?

Monday morning Jackson and I went to Enterprise again. The water was up about another foot and was 105.5 on the gauge where the water was coming in. The water temperature was 45 degrees. We started out with deep crank baits, me with a DT-16 and Jackson with an assortment, one of which was a large fat free shad.  We continued with the deep diving cranks but in one spot that has been particularly good, I put on a Carolina rig with a small Balsa B “fatboy” tied on the end of the 18 inch leader. My intention was to be able to fish right on the bottom but slow. In 5 tries I came up with 5 bunches of junk from the bottom. Good idea but did not work. I even tried another higher floating Rapala type bait with the same results. We did not have much cooperation from the fish but after a while a 2 1/2 volunteered and shortly thereafter we had another bite but nothing to show for it. Then after a long dry spell through what I thought was the best spot, we moved. When moving we turned on the side scan and were seeing shad everywhere and in one place we saw some fish that might have been bass. We circled back and started casting. After we got through the spot we had looked at the FOD hit hard and was a fat 4 – 1. We tried and tried but could convince nothing else to bite so we left.

Tom and I went for a rematch on Lake Enterprise on Thursday. Water temperature was 49 to 51 degrees, the same as last week. The water was two feet higher than last Friday which made the water where we caught fish 14 to 13 feet deep rather than 12 to 11. That small change would not let my DT-10 touch the bottom and that seemed to be needed to catch a fish. Tom had a deeper diver, made in China, that worked fine in the deeper water. I put on a DT-16 but it took me a pretty good while to figure out how to make it work without dredging up cypress leaves off the bottom. The DT-16 and a 5 XD would get to the bottom and unfortunately two stayed there. My vaunted lure saving “gitter” was only 1 for 3. Once again,”Mr brag always loses his tail”. We also used rattletrap/Yozuri lipless cranks fished SLOWLY right on the bottom. The slowly thing was part of my problem I know. Most of the fish we caught were hooked on the back hook indicating they were just not into feeding like they were last week. The larger fish were absent too. Our FOD was about 2 1/2 pounds. The lake is full of shad. The depthfinder showed clouds of them most of the time. The fish showed this as they were all fat and in good shape. We ended up with 15, mostly thanks to Tom.

Today at 9 a.m., Tom , Jackson and I went to Lake Enterprise for the season opener. It started out slow. We were fishing out in the middle of the lake starting out with a deep suspending Rogue, a swimbait, a Carolina rig, a fat free shad, and a DT-10. The water was 10 to 12 feet deep in most places we fished and was around 51 degrees. You had to be careful to hold your rod up during the retrieve so your DT-10 would not pull up all the leaves from the cypress trees that were on the bottom. The Rogue struck first on a bass not much longer than it was. Shortly thereafter the fat free shad came up with one that was bigger. Jackson had to leave at 11:30 and when he did Tom and I left for the far end of the lake and ran upon the pipe that was letting water in the lake from Bayou Bartholomew. We caught two there on a swim jig. From there we idled along eating a sandwich and looking at the depthfinder. The lake was full of shad in balls in some places. Tom was watching for bass under the shad and soon said “There they are” and stopped the boat. He made a cast back toward where he had seen the fish and sure enough, one loaded on. Then I had two bites right at the boat on two successive casts   but missed them both. As we went down that side we started to catch a fish here and there. Then I caught one that was 4-4.

Not to be left out Tom caught one 4-10 and another 4-14 that claimed FOD honors.

We finally came to a place where it was a fish every few casts. By this time we were using a DT-10 and another diving crank bait. We were using them as if we were fishing a worm, pulling in by lifting the rod tip and then reeling in the slack.When you stopped pulling in and paused the bait while you reeled the slack was when the bite would come. We quit at 4 with a total of 22 bass with 4 over 4 and the biggest 5 weighing 21 pounds 5 ounces. An outstanding start to 2016.

The private hole is coming back !  I started fishing at 10:30. Not having been fishing in almost two months, I had to call around to get some ideas on what to use. Hal was fishing when I called and was not having much luck. Tom has been catching fish out in the middle of Lake Enterprise on a hair jig and a crankbait. He said you had to see shad on your depthfinder and the bass would be under them.  As I prepared the boat there were shad “flicking” the top of the water out in one certain spot. That spot was added to my “be back book”. The first place was right at the landing where, the last time I was there, I got a lot of small fish bites on a worm with none caught. A shaky head was sent in for revenge but the same bump bump bites came with none caught. A DT-6 was the same size as the “flickers” so I figured it would work if I could make myself pull it slow enough. It did catch some small ones. This place was a shallow point one of the few around the hole. After the point I headed for the “flicking”shad which were out in 25 feet of water. The bass were there and at one point there was one on every cast.  There were other places I wanted to try but I was not going to leave biting fish. Many were caught just as the bait started coming up to the boat. Some just followed the bait up and made a halfhearted swipe at it as it came out of the water. The size of the fish ranged from small to very small so in an effort to catch some larger fish I put on a DT-10.  It immediately caught fish but the same small ones. I also tried a Rapala XRAP XRD 8 jerk bait. It is longer then the DT-6 and I noticed there were a lot more follow ups that did not bite so I stayed with the DT-6. The shad were everywhere and so were the bass, so many in fact, I did not even get to try some of my favorite places. The fish were in great shape and fat as they could be and they have plenty of shad to eat.

I did my best to photograph the depthfinder when a mass of shad were present. Food is not going to be the problem. The FOD’s were 1 1/2 pounds. I quit at 2:15 and caught 81 in 4 1/2 hours fishing. That figures to a fish every 3 1/3 minutes. Lots of action even if they were small. If all of our river lakes are this healthy it’s going to be great fishing in a couple of years when these little ones grow up.

This was copied and pasted from the MDWFP weekly fishing reports:

Lake Ferguson

Tuesday, November 24, 2015 3:01 PM

Lots of big bass were collected during Fall electrofishing sampling at Lake Ferguson!

For current river stages and forecasts. click on the following link:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/lmrfc/?n=lmrfc-mississippiandohioriverforecast
Recent electrofishing sampling shows that the bass population at Ferguson has rebounded, and bass in the 1 – 4 pound range are abundant.

I ate both yesterday, one by choice and one because I had to. I ate the carp by choice, and it was palatable, but the having to eat crow is never good. The Delta Wildlife held a meeting entitled “Delta Fisheries Update” . It started with presentations about the Mississippi River and how it has evolved in very recent history. In the 1930’s and early 40’s there were 16 cutoffs that reduced the length of the river 154 miles, one of the tidbits that were offered. One thing I learned was about the classification of the connections of bodies of water to the river. Lake Ferguson is a parapotanel connection, since it is always connected on one end. On the other hand the private hole is a paleopotanel connection that only connects every few years due to high water. There were other classifications but I could not write fast enough. When the river is high, the batture forests contribute to lowering the nutrient levels in the river , allowing it to thrive and not become overburdened with nutrients. There was talk of rewatering of Delta streams by pumping water from the river into Moon Lake and allowing it to flow down the Sunflower and attaching the Tallahatchie to the Quiver River to use some of the flow from the Corps flood control reservoirs in the summer to enhance low water flows.

Now comes the eating crow part. I have always thought the decline in our fisheries was caused by the flooding of green vegetation in the spring of the year and the subsequent decay of the same taking oxygen out of the water when the fish were in the shallows and it had nothing to do with the Asian carp. The data presented showed I was wrong. The carp might not be the whole effect but is a part of the problem. Presentations by Nathan Aycock of the MDWFP and Quinton Phelps of the Missouri Department of Conservation were most educational. The bighead carp and the silver carp were imported into the country in the 70’s by the government for the purpose of improving the water quality of sewerage lagoons. They are filter feeders and perfect for the job of filtering the phytoplankton from the lagoons. In a flood event in Arkansas they escaped into the White River. Arkansas fish farmers get the blame for their introduction but they were raising them for the government and it was not really their fault. The fish are very prolific in that they can lay 50,000 to 5 million eggs per year.  Spawning takes place in the summer and lasts until the middle of September. For spawning to be successful it has to occur in flowing water because their eggs will sink in still water. They reach sexual maturity in 2 to 3 years and will live from 5 to 13 years. The growth rate is 1 yr = 12 inches, 2 yr = 24 inches and 3 yr = 28 inches.  An important distinction: Silver Carp jump and the Bighead Carp do not. The bighead is larger, up to 100+ pounds, and the silver tops out at 40 to 50. The MDWFP has done electrofishing studies in Wolf Lake, Bee Lake, Little Eagle, and Belzoni Cutoff. In 2011 the carp were introduced to Bee and Wolf Lakes by the flood and were not introduced to Little Eagle and the Belzoni Cutoff. Studies showed since 2011 lower numbers of largemouth bass, bream and crappie in the carp affected lakes and also smaller average size and growth. Since the affected lakes have no moving water no reproduction has been detected, good news. The fry of the sport fish survive on phytoplankton when they first hatch so any reduction in it has to be a negative . In an experiment in Missouri, the carp had a negative effect on gizzard shad and bigmouth buffalo. The fish were put in the same tanks and fed. The shad almost all died and the buffalo lost weight while the silver carp were fine. In another Missouri electrofishing study, the carp were shown to have a very negative effect on phytoplankton, gizzard shad and bigmouth buffalo numbers.  It was found the carp are not scared to travel. One fitted with an embedded electronic chip traveled 400 miles in the Mississippi River in two weeks.

So much for eating crow, how about the carp? We had carp for lunch along with catfish. The carp was supplied by Moon River Foods of Indianola.  It was prepared by Cicero’s and was not bad. The texture and the taste was good. We also viewed a video of the carp seining operation in Lake Ferguson. It took four men to pull the net into the boat with a 12 to 15 flopping large carp in it. It was a labor and equipment intensive operation. The carp are here to stay and are damaging to out fishing.  Optimistically I want to see how the fishing in Lake Ferguson and the river lakes improve with the large number of small sport fish that are now present. I’m not ready to sell my rods and reels yet.