Tawakoni Blues

Loaded up before the sun came up and headed out to Lake Tawakoni for some serious catfishing. I had hopes of catching one over 20 pounds but didn't quite do it. I met up with several guys from the TFF and we fished around for several hours catching some pretty good fish. The wind wasn't blowing to hard so I just started off by drifting some shad and within about 5 min, I had my first fish on. I get it in and I'm pretty pumped now, I re-bait all my rods and throw'em back out. A few min later heres another. After that it was pretty slow. I started thinking, "I have the Navonics Map map on my phone, why don't I try using that." And after that, I ended up catching a few more and seeing one of the guys from the TFF catch a 28 pounder, his new personal best. All in all I had a fun time and might consider heading back down  there for another try.

I've never really used this app the way it's designed, after this trip I think it works pretty good.

The first two fish and I'm thinking, man oh man, this is going to be a crazy day.

Chess from the TFF with his 28 pounder

After the wind quit blowing the bite shut off, its relaxin' time.

My 4 fish stringer for the day.

Alittle Saturday Fishing

Headed back out to Arrowhead again with a few buddies and some cold beer. Needless to say we caught a bigger buzz than fish, but thats how it goes sometimes. We ended up with three keepers, the biggest might have gone pounds. We spent about 3 hours throwing cast nets for shad and now this makes 3 weeks we've been unable to catch'em. We talked to several other guys and they've all said the same thing. Even the bait shops are running out of perch and frozen shad.

I'm headed to Tawakoni this weekend to load up on some big ones so hopefully the weather will cooperate and everything will go good.

Bluebird Days = No Fish

I headed out to Arrowhead again for alittle catfishig, and called it after two and a half hours. Started off drifting stink bait, no bites. Then where I ended, I anchored up off a big rock point where we caught a few the other day and still didn't have any bites. I get ready to move and I couldn't get my anchor up, so I had to just ditch it. I paddled back up wind and changed all the rigs to circle hooks and tossed out some perch. I made about 6 different drifts across this area about the size of a foot ball field and didn't ever have a bite so I decided to load up. I was kind of surprised as this was the same area we caught all those blues Sunday.

Cold Weather Blues

We headed out to Lake Arrowhead yesterday for a little catfish action. I caught the first one first rattle out of the box and the next about 30 min later off a point north of the ramp on the west side. We caught a few small ones that didn't keep then moved about 50 yards to a flat next to big channel and caught the big one, and one of the smaller ones. The big one came off the top edge of the channel, so we moved over into the channel thinking they'd be stacked up in there but only had a few bites.That was it for a while and then we headed over towards Pawnee point and caught a few more little ones. The lake is real low, theres lots of dirt showing that I've never seen out there, we had lots of bites, and it was really cold. We couldn't catch any shad at our normal places so we figure they've moved out to deeper water.

So after we got back and took the pictures, I texted one to my buddy over in Nocona, he shoots this one back, a 25lb blue and a 34lb yellow, they caught yesterday at Lake Nocona.

Looks like their on!!

Gettin the itch

So I've been hearing a lot about catfish out at Arrowhead, unfortunately the forecast is calling for an 80% chance of rain for today and Saturday. My buddy went out last week and caught several nice ones on jugs so I'm thinking I need to get out and get on some as well. Yesterday I rigged up a very rudimentary camera mount on my yak, I think it'll work great. I think I should be able to start making some videos now. Maybe a monster catfish video...

Duck Hunting

For me, the cold weather of November means two things, Thanksgiving and duck hunting. This year I picked up a new kayak and have been fishing mainly out of it, but the other day I thought I'd take it duck hunting. I usually hunt out of a bigger aluminum boat thats more set up for duck hunting but I thought this would be fun.

So, I get the truck loaded up and head out to the lake, the place I have in mind to put in, I've never actually been, just driven by. So wouldn't you know, it's dark, lots of big boulders to drag my yak and all the hunting stuff over, and when I get close to the water theres an old fence blocking people out from the lake. Luckily, I find a place in the fence I can get through and then procede to get the yak loaded up.

The paddle to the place I had in mind, it only takes about 15 minutes, its close to where I hunted last year, but becasue of the drought this summer theres no water at last years spot. So I start setting up at this place where theres tons of logs and brush, I'm thinking, this is kind of odd that on this whole bank this is the only place with wood. Then I see why, as I'm down in all this wood, a beaver comes out about 6 feet from where I'm at, and races towards the water. After that I decide if there was more than one it'd probably have came out to. So I go on and set up my kayak to hunt out of.

Now we're hunting, right at day break a pair of teal come buzzing into the spread and I fire off two rounds but miss both, so I reach down to for the calls and try to get''em to circle back, but of course their gone. I spend the rest of the morning watching the sky for ducks and trying to get my phone to load the internet so I can see what the TPWD says about shooting beavers. Anyways, no more ducks fly in, only water turkeys and a few cranes, so I call it good and head back in.

My first kayak hunt, I got skunked.

Here is the coosa loaded up, not sure how much it weighed but it was heavy!!

The blind next to a beaver dam.

My view looking out.