I went out this week not really expecting to do well. Every bad juju the guides seem to complain about was in full effect. The week before had seen heavy rains and the water was stained. The lake was over pool and the gates were open. There was a light north wind. There was a new moon. You name it, every sign pointed to a poor week of fishing. However we actually did pretty well. We never saw any big fish, but we caught lots of little ones in the morning and late afternoon. In between it was mostly hot, especially when the wind laid down, which it did too often. I jumped off one about 6 lbs and Rhandy caught one about that. Those were the two biggest fish we saw.
I fished 3 full days with Dale, 4 half day evenings with Rhandy, plus a half day morning crappie trip with Rhandy. Dale counted 66 bass combined for our 3 days and I think we were close to that with Rhandy. My buddy David came along on Monday and he caught a few, too. David also caught the biggest drum and the biggest catfish when he forgot we were fishing for bass. My biggest bass this trip was about 5.5 lbs. We could usually catch some fish between sunrise and 9 am and again after 5 pm. In between it was very slow going and often very hot.
This was Rhandy's last trip for his Bee Line boat and he'll have a new center console boat on my next trip. I'm not sure if he'll still have "sponsor" stickers from the Banjo Minnow, Popeil Pocket Fisherman, Helicopter Lure, Flying Lure or Snoopy Catch 'Em kit. Not so serious, indeed.
Thursday morning I went out with Rhandy and we hit 5 or 6 of his brush piles before we had to go in at 11. We ended up with 21 crappie keepers which I can testify are very tasty.
If I head back out anytime soon I will definitely be doing split days. The summertime switch has definitely been flipped.
