Long PIB trip

Favorite Fishing Partner and I drove to St. Louis to visit kids and grandkids, do some fishing, and watch the grandson play some baseball. With all the rain and flooded interstates and highways (and major accidents), we had to make our own detours and wait in stalled traffic forever.
Our plan was to fish a couple of lakes that had been really hot (before the storms). The first day, we went to a nearby smaller lake, but couldn't get to our spot because the road was flooded. We hit a different spot, but couldn't make a normal cast, eventually just holding the cork and jig up in the air, releasing , and letting the 30+ mph winds carry the rig to the water. We didn't get a bump, but did watch some middle eastern people catch silver (Asian) carp to eat.
The next day, grandson Dylan and his girl Emily took me to catch some bluegills. The pond was WAAAY up and muddy. Got one bluegill.
We canceled the trip to Rend Lake where son Jon (Montanaboy) had slayed 'em the week before, because reports were that the lake was high and muddy.
Alternate plan was to fish cats at Lake of the Ozarks. The guys at the bait shop said to forget that. They told us big crappie (17") were hitting jigs like crazy at any brush pile at any of the private docks. We covered a number of coves for most of the day, and got one 6" crappie and a bass. We did see an unbelievable number of huge mansions and boats that approached yacht size, before we gave up and fished for cats. No shad, so we used worms and cut bluegills, yielding two blues, two channels, and 4 drum.
That summarizes the PIB (Pain In Butt) part of the trip.
We did get to enjoy some great food, see the sights, and best of all, see Dylan star for his high school baseball team in four games. Great plays in the outfield, runs scored, RBIs, stolen bases, and outstanding pitching. The day we left, he pitched a three-hit shutout, went 2-3 (his team only had three other hits), and broke up a scoreless game with two RBIs in the sixth.
All-in-all, although the fishing was poor, it wasn't such a bad PIB trip.

Nice report. Not sure about the fishing part, but family visit is the most important!

Wondering why nobody is fishing the blackwell dock. One of these days, I'll have to meet up with you at that lake! (maybe we've met already)

If you talked with a guy driving an old used-to-be-yellow Toyota rustbucket, we HAVE met before. The dock at Blackwell was dead yesterday, but there were lots of fish on the banks.