Another Proper Sliming

Didn’t sleep much after falling out in my chair at about 7 last night. Got up and tied some jigs, made coffee and shared a muffin with Piper and turned on the news and found that they’re expecting temps near 100* today. Nope, I’m not waiting for any of that and with the truck already connected it was time to go. Just now 5:40. First light but not sunup yet. I stopped to play with the crappie for a while but they weren’t quite ready to wake up yet. Nino was on his way to join me so I broke away from where I was and went to help him launch. Didn’t have long to wait and we were off to a place he likes to fish while I’m at the mines. Stripers live there but I haven’t heard of any catches on anything but live bait for a while now. A good run downriver and for as hot as it was supposed to get it felt kinda cool running along this morning in the shade. The fishing started kinda slow but the big fellas were feeding all around me. The crashes on topwater were just massive. One Gator that was over ten feet was sliding around but finally found somewhere to go. The fish finally woke up and we started getting a few redbreast and small bass and the spotted brownish looking fish I can’t identify. About an hour later we moved into some cypress and shade(thank God!) and the bite improved greatly with a fish on each cast now and then. Now I know why Nino’s always headed up here. I pitched near this one cypress and got distracted for a few seconds and when I lifted on the rod it was VERY heavy. Then he decided he didn’t like the neighborhood and went to find another, non stop drag sounds. I moved to more open water but had to come back as he’d found a branch. He didn’t win and the fight was on. It took a couple of minutes but I finally got a real nice catfish up near the boat, but he didn’t like my looks and here we went again. He tired and it took a few swipes to get him in the net but NiNo and I were making noise like teenagers whoopin and hollering. Neither of us thought he’d see the deck of the boat. We got into lots more panfish and I retied when I broke one of the Daiwa tungsten jigs I’d tied for the day, snapped the hook right off and the jig still looked great. One of Jungle Jim’s 1/48 chub heads got to play and did just as well as the broken jig. Now it was hot and I needed to eat and the traffic was building so I heard Mama calling my name and off we went for the house. Spent the ride back jumping wakes in the light boat and put it on the trailer, now I’m in search of a sammich. This fat boys hungry! A very good morning and a great first trip for the new trout x that performed excellent. Nothing about it that I was unhappy with and the catfish had it looking like a horseshoe. Nino was sure it would break but it did very well. For the money this is a great start for me on the way down the rabbit hole. Here’s the pics and thanks for following along. Hope y’all get out soon and maybe I’ll see ya there…….Skeet

Caught over a dozen of these with about half that could’ve been dinner. Everybody got a pass today.


Nifty fork in this one’s gill flap. These thing’s really fight hard!

This one was fillet material and wrapped up in some weeds but I finally got him.

At a bit over twenty inches he was one to remember.

The broken and the replacement. Jim’s jig was lookin real good and the fish thought so too.

This is the unidentified variety that I thought was a flier. A recent post proved me wrong and I’m back to square one. Whatever he is, there’s lots of em and they aren’t shy. I’ve never seen one over maybe 6 inches. If you’ve read this far, thanks for coming along. Tim.