What a mess this winter has been. Normally we are up there and fishing by mid December, but with the flooding in December my first trip was on February 5th. Of course we hit some Badin Stripers and some Blewett Falls cats to fill in the time. Called a few friends that couldn't go and since Zach is working full time and the girls had clogging I was stuck fishing by myself. Started off at the 64 bridge like normal and caught 6 fish with 1 being a keeper and none of them in the normal areas I catch them in. Moved around for about an hour to catch those so I took off to a different area of the lake I've never fished before. I got that Lowrance HDS7 with sidescan and put it to good use. Ended up marking some fish and caught 62 for the day to get my 20th keeper. Dumped the rest of the bait and headed home.



The next time I could get out was on February 10th. Again the situation had me going by myself, and again I started off at the 64 bridge, and again I caught 6 fish with 1 being a keeper, and again it took about an hour to do that, and again I took off to where I caught them before, and again I caught some there. Caught 47 to get my 20th keeper this day. Dumped the bait and headed home to get these cleaned up and put away before heading to church.



I went out this past Saturday, February 20th with Zachary and Maggie Mae with me. I love fishing with my kids! We put in at Seaforth and headed to where I had caught the few I had caught around the 64 bridge. I think we counted 20 boats at the bridge at one time. Surprisingly we caught about 40 there in the area before they kinda shut off. We took off to where I had been catching them the last couple weeks and there was no one around. I was hoping they would still be there, but nothing. Fished in the area for about an hour with no bites. Checked a couple other new areas and nothing. Saw a congregation of boats at Ebeneezer so tried in there. Only picked up about 3 or 4, so we headed back up to our little spot on 64 and ended up catching around 40 more giving us a total for the day of 87 with 26 keepers. Ended up running out of bait, and Maggie caught her biggest of the day, just over 12", off of a dead and dried up minnow she found in the bottom of the boat. She was thrilled!! LOL Lots of boats on the water which I was expecting with the Bigeye tourney going on. Most I have seen in a while.



This year has pretty unusual for us. Normally we get to the lake about sunup, but this year all three times I've gotten to Seaforth about 8ish and left around 3. We usually have a lot of keepers just over 10", but this year most of our keepers have been in that 11-12" range with several pushing 13". The first two trips we only caught 1 or 2 really short fish, but Saturday I think Maggie caught 10 or more that were under 6" and some pushing 4". LOL We usually hit 100 on the clicker every time we fish down there, but I also usually have 3-5 people on the boat instead of being solo. Hopefully this weather settle down and the spring will be a good one.
Mike

Take a kid outdoors!