All in all a good two good days even with the RCC siting!
Friday, I go to take my daughter and grand daughter fishing, we just went to lake Poinsett, fish weren't really biting that well, but we had a good time. Got to see RCC and Carol, they were out cat fishing, but I think the best part was when my Daughter and I were in the chairs on the front deck and my granddaughter climbed in between us and was watching the 2d display. I had fish ID turned on and we went over a school of fish holding about 18 feet deep in 23 foot of water, my 6 year old granddaughter says to her mom, "Look mom, a kingdom of fish." Her mom replies, "that is not a kingdom Lea, that is a school of fish." To which Lea immediately replied, "but I thought school was out today for good Friday?", her mom explained that you see schools of fish all times of the year, and Lea says she wouldn't want to be one of them always having to be in school.
Then yesterday went to a private reservoir outside of Jonesboro to help a man eradicate some crappie since he said his reservoir had too many crappie in it. I got there about 7 am, and he and his grand kids were down the reservoir getting into his boat, I called him on the phone and he said they would be right down, and asked if I thought I could back my boat into the concrete ramp they had? Told him I thought I could handle it (I didn't realize the guy had a brand new Tracker 175 TXW with 60 HP Mercury, had never owned a boat in his live and had numerous problems backing and launching his boat). Anyway, I got the boat ready and started backing in, by that time he and his grandkids were up to the landing where I was, so I backed in and did the Ulterra launch. As soon as the boat floated off the trailer and looked like it was floating away, they quickly started heading for my boat, that is until they say the trolling motor deploy and the spot lock holding the boat in position. They just turned an kept on fishing.
Anyway, wind was a real bear yesterday with no tree lines around to provide even the slightest wind break, even that early in the morning. So proceeded to use auto chart live and my zero line card to map the 110 acre reservoir and see if they had any structure. After about 3 hours of mapping, I had a contour map developed, and since most of the better fish I had caught came out of 9 foot of water, I started following the 9 foot contour. I was down to fishing with two poles since I couldn't keep anymore baited, fight the wind and land the fish when I called a buddy of mine to bring two of his sons out and help me. an hour later (about noon) they showed up and we fished until 4 PM with two of us on the front and two on the back each with 3 poles in the water and we stayed pretty busy. At the end of the day, we had put 150 fish in the two live wells that we thought were big enough to keep, wound up keeping 30 of the biggest, all between 12 and 14 inches, and took the other 120 and released them into a local creek/ditch that many locals go to to fish for crappie. That way they can grow and make someone else happy.
Oh, and just so you know, if the wind is high enough, a 48 inch drift sock won't hold a 20 foot express to anything less than 1.2 miles and hour, and waves 1/2 mile down the reservoir from where the wind starts hitting the water are still two foot tall white caps.
Now, I need to figure out how to talk him out of a key to the gate so I can fish it more often and try to get him to let me put some crappie habitats in the reservoir to give the fish some structure to hold around. I wonder if he would swap a contour map and the gps locations of the structures I put in so he could take his grandkids to catch fish all the time rather than just riding and hoping, for a key? I will have to ask him this week when I meet with him to explain his boat to him, how to launch and load it and how to use his electronics. I think I want to be rich when I grow up.
Anyway, a good two days!:biggrin
