Bowfishng & High Powered Rifles

One of my buddies has a big ranch, and theres this little river that flows through it. Last week, he asked if he could borrow my yak, because he's thinking about getting one and wanted to try mine, so I said sure, nothing better than another friend with one. He came back and was telling me that since we're in such a drought, their river has pretty much turned into a long, shallow, skinny lake thats full of carp and that we need to go out a see if we can stick a few. 

So, I met them out there Saturday, I try and figure out how I'm going to tackle this, the mud is that smelly black kind thats about knee deep and sticks to everything so that made it even more fun. I get into my yak, stand up and start paddling, I get to a part thats alittle deeper and all of a sudden theres about 100 or more carp going nuts all around me. What happens next is kind of what I should have expected after not shooting my bowfishg rig in about 7 years. I get off about 5 misses, then I notice, half of the knock has broken off. Theres fish all around so I give it abother try, with the broken knock and stick one. I'm pretty excited now. After that, I realize the handle on my reel has fallen off and I guess it went on through the scupper holes so I can't reel in any more line but I keep on trying with the broken knock, after about 10 dry fires, we find an extra knock and with a few modifications, it's glued to the arrow. We shoot a few more times and miss before we decide to go on another shooting adventure elsewhere on their place.

 This was some fun shooting, we were shooting beer cans starting where that dirt road bends, 200yds, then back to 350. I was shooting an old open sight 30-30 and getting within a foot of it a 200, pretty hard to see much further than that without a scope. The guy shooting in the picture shot a milk jug at 540 right before we got there. Pretty impressive.

Spring Cleaning

Even though its still January, the weather we've been having feels like early spring. And with that, I've been getting the bass itch!! So, I've been cleaning rods, cleaning and re-spooling reels, building spinner baits, and organizing my tackle for this up coming bass season. I've gone from about 10 plano trays full of lures to 4, and 3 big Tupperware deals full of worms to 1. One thing I want to do is carry more stuff but in a smaller package so I have been digging through everything I have, seeing what I think I'll want to use and setting it out. The only thing is it all has to fit into a worm bag and ONE, plano tray. I also want to see if I can get away without having to buy anymore lures, except when I loose one. So far its been pretty easy to get what I want in there so we'll see how it works. I feel confident in what I have, and really it's possibly too much, but oh well having alittle too much is usually ok.

Anchor Management

I rigged this up on my Coosa the other day, its real simple to make, probably less than 10 bucks worth of parts to make.

New Year, New Goals

I've been getting ready for this upcoming Spring for the past several weeks now, new reels, new rods, among other things. I've been thinking mainly about setting up a few multi day trips to some of the big time fishing rivers here in Texas. Last year we had planned a trip to the Devils, and the night before we were to head down, we got the first big rain of the year and it just happened to be in Aug. So I feel mother nature owes us a good year this time. We did a trip down the Brazos last year and that was a fun one, so we'll probably do it again. Most importantly, I plan to work on two of my goals I've had for the last 10 years. The first is to catch a 15+ pound bass out of Lake Nocona, last year there were several people who caught a few double digits, the biggest being 13 something. The other is to catch a new lake record out of Arrowhead, I've only had that one for about the past four years, but really haven't had any luck on big fish, mainly just 5 pounders and smaller.  Heres to a good year!

The Drift

I took off new years day and decided I'd do alittle cat fishing at our local lake again. And like always, if their biting, your bound to catch a few. I had a slow start as catching shad has proven difficult the past few weeks, and I just found out the place where we've been catching them is rumored to have golden algae, which kills all the fish. I usually keep several bags of frozen shad just in case for back-ups and always freeze what I don't use after going fishing, so theres almost always bait.

I get out to Arrowhead some time after one, and paddle out into the wind and throw out a few lines along with the drift sock. The area I start is where I have most faith, but no bites there. As I drift back towards were I put in, theres one more area, we've caught fish in and right at that moment, one of the rods starts doubling over and theres a fish on. I get it to the boat and its a nice keeper so I'm excited now, their biting. I re-bait all the hooks and paddle back up to where I start, the wind has changed directions alittle now, so it's blowing me out into deeper water. I start my drift this time with one getting hug up on the bottom and breaking off, so I rig that one back up as fast as I can and get it back into the water. This time when I get into the second good area, I'm on the deeper end of it, and one of the rods bends over and looks like it could rip the holder of the kayak if I didn't grab it soon enough. I get it in, and finally have one big enough to use the net on and it's huge. I didn't have a scale but I think it might be the biggest one I've ever caught. After that I made one more drift and the wind quit blowing, usually when that happens they shut off, so I fished awhile longer and had no luck so I called it a day.

After I got all these cleaned up, we had a nice little fish fry with hush puppies, french frys, onions, pickles and the always delicious cold beer.