Lack of Blog Activity This Past Week

I must admit that I have not been on my blog or any other blog for the past week, due to projects going on around the house. There are times when you just let things go around the house and you tell yourself that I will get to it next week and the next week becomes next month and so on. Well I have been on next week and next month projects. I did manage to squeeze in a fishing trip on Desmel Creek yesterday for three hours, and land a few gills and one largemouth. The spots were not cooperating at all so I call it a day around 10 AM. and headed for home. I did discover that dark flies are more productive early in the morning than lighter flies. I feel this may have to do with the silhouette that a darker fly projects, especially against clear water. This is my own theory, who knows when one is trying to figure out the reaction of fish towards a lure at different times of the day. Hope everyone out there has a great weekend, and lands more fish than I did yesterday.

This has got to be one of the most colorful warmwater fish around--here in the South we refer to this species as a Sunperch

Strange place to hook a fish, but the Crafish fly stays put and I landed this nice Shellcracker. The way this fish was hooked tells me that the fish was not hitting.

Fishing With Jenny on Smith Lake

Fishing with my daughter yesterday brought back some fond memories of when she was in Jr. High and High School. Back then she would go with me and sometimes bring along some of her friends and we would spend the better part of the day on the lake. Yesterday's trip was an extension of those outings.  We started the morning out with me baiting her hook and placing a tiny white crappie nibblets on the point of the hook just below a big juicy cricket. That part hasn't changed because she still will not bait her hook and she isn't fond of removing the fish from the hook after she lands it. That is o.k. because I am just glad to have her back on the water with me. Jenny has always favored fishing with live bait as opposed to artificial lures. She claims she can catch more fish with live bait, and I sometimes agree with her, especially when the surface water warms to near 90 in the dead of summer.
We left the house at 5AM and fish until 9:30 and she landed most all the fish. I was kind of along as the fishing companion. The highlight of the morning was the 22" Channel Cat she landed about 30 minutes into the trip. It took her a while to get the fish to the boat because fishing with a 7 1/2 ft. microlight rod and 4 lb. test line takes time. I must say she hasn't forgotten how to play a fish that size and she knows exactly how much pressure to apply to the rod to keep the fish out of the brush and into the deep water. She also got into some of the big bluegills and a couple of the spots, to round the trip out. I was using the fly rod and landed some smaller bluegills and one spot. As I told you the morning belongs to Jenny and I was glad to be just along for the ride. I am looking forward to when she comes back and I can take my son-in-law B.T. out and he can hopefully land a nice Spotted Bass.

The big boy of the morning, Jenny told me that there was no way she was holding this thing even after landing it

I did manage to get her to hold this Spotted Bass she landed.

It want be long until this little guy will be in the boat with us