All I can say is that I'm a REALLY glad I'm not helping Dale and Nancy Jones clean fish tonight!
The Jones came over from Coffee County to fish with me today and it was a absolute slaughter. On the very first drift we all three hooked up big cats virtually at the same instant. It was a Chinese Fire Drill! A 12 lb. blue, a 14 lb. blue and a 28 lb. blue on light tackle all at once. I was doing some shuckin' and jivin' to get the grabbers on them all. What fun!
The fun continued, in spite of some fairly serious rain.
The Jones were keepin' fish today. We had their one regular-sized cooler in the boat and they had another big cooler in the car. Two different times the boat cooler was filled to overflowing and we had to run back to the car of "offload." It was crazy.
Later we went to chase bluegill and I fussed big time at my wife when I realized she'd taken my wax worms to feed her bluebirds last night... and didn't put them back. <grrrr>
As it turned out... it was a good thing. We resorted to jigs. The Jones actually just took up fishing a year ago, and had NEVER done anything but bait fish. Nancy had never caught a fish on an artificial lure.
She said, "I've got some in my tackle box, but I just bought 'em because they were pretty."
Lo and behold we found a Mother Lode of bull bream, rock bass, spots and a few crappie. They were ganged up in some slack water on a little 8-foot hump surrounded by deep water. Nancy got a great lesson in jig fishing, and picked it up like a pro. And to be honest, it was probably the most bull bream I've ever caught fishing jigs (w/o bait). It was a blast! With a few more miscellaneous catfish on the bottom, we filled up their THIRD cooler of fish with bluegill and rock bass.
We released the 28 lb. blue but all the rest went on ice today. I'm guessing they've got 200 lbs. of fish to clean tonight. But they were darn happy about it. And that means life is good and gettin' better every day.
The Jones came over from Coffee County to fish with me today and it was a absolute slaughter. On the very first drift we all three hooked up big cats virtually at the same instant. It was a Chinese Fire Drill! A 12 lb. blue, a 14 lb. blue and a 28 lb. blue on light tackle all at once. I was doing some shuckin' and jivin' to get the grabbers on them all. What fun!
The fun continued, in spite of some fairly serious rain.
The Jones were keepin' fish today. We had their one regular-sized cooler in the boat and they had another big cooler in the car. Two different times the boat cooler was filled to overflowing and we had to run back to the car of "offload." It was crazy.
Later we went to chase bluegill and I fussed big time at my wife when I realized she'd taken my wax worms to feed her bluebirds last night... and didn't put them back. <grrrr>
As it turned out... it was a good thing. We resorted to jigs. The Jones actually just took up fishing a year ago, and had NEVER done anything but bait fish. Nancy had never caught a fish on an artificial lure.
She said, "I've got some in my tackle box, but I just bought 'em because they were pretty."
Lo and behold we found a Mother Lode of bull bream, rock bass, spots and a few crappie. They were ganged up in some slack water on a little 8-foot hump surrounded by deep water. Nancy got a great lesson in jig fishing, and picked it up like a pro. And to be honest, it was probably the most bull bream I've ever caught fishing jigs (w/o bait). It was a blast! With a few more miscellaneous catfish on the bottom, we filled up their THIRD cooler of fish with bluegill and rock bass.
We released the 28 lb. blue but all the rest went on ice today. I'm guessing they've got 200 lbs. of fish to clean tonight. But they were darn happy about it. And that means life is good and gettin' better every day.
