Scum Of The Earth

Last weekend, I got a wild hair to go fish a place I'd been told about. A place rumored to have 10 pounders like it was no big deal. So, I called one of my friends who'd just gotten a new Coosa, and had yet to put it in anything except a swimming pool. Well we made it to our little homey hole sometime mid morning and the first thing we noticed was the nastiest black mud you get to trek through to get to the lake. So we did that and now we're fishing. The next thing I notice, is this water is crystal clear and full of grass and this slimy scum stuff,  that was so thick with every stroke of your paddle, you'd lift up about 20 pounds on the blades. After awhile I got over that, I was using a Spro frog, a lure that I hadn't used in years, and hooked several bass. Then the wind picked up to just almost gale force and blew both of us to this little pocket, where we sat for a while and could only get perch to bite. While all this was going on, I hooked into something big, it caught me by such surprise, I thought I was hung up in the weeds then all of a sudden, my rod doubles over and I see m line start going perpendicular to where it was supposed to be. Then without warning everything goes still and I reel up to just a bare hook. Maybe next time I told myself as I shook my head. Oh well. Well here are some pictures of this place, we decided we'd call it the coal mine.

Brazos Below Lake Whitney

It's been a few weeks now, but a few of us ventured that way from all over the great state of Texas for a bachelor party for one of our friends. We had planned on going down below PK, but with the drought situation the way it was around the time we were planning on going, we decided there were better options of places we could go.

So, Chase and I, took off around 5am and  we finally made it to West in time to grab a few kolaches and to catch our breath from the drive down. We then drove over to Dick's, (when we made it back on day two, we figured out why they call him that) and eventually met up with the rest of our group. Sometime mid-morning Saturday we set out and fished the entire way to our camp site. I think everyone in the group caught at least one bass, and Brady, the bachelor, hooked into the biggest bass of his life, we weighed it, and it ended up being over 7 pounds. Most of the fish caught were caught on flukes, and senkos. We cooked steaks for supper, drank too much beer and had a great time. On the second day I hooked into what I believed to be possibly my biggest bass, unfortunately, it got down in a big log jam and broke off, I was sick. After this trip, I believe this is my favorite section of the Brazos. Anyways, here are a few pictures I snapped along the way, enjoy.

Solo Trip Down and Up the Brazos

Well I went out Saturday with big ambitions, kind of a Texas Independence Day thing, and of catching big fish, and lots of them. As for the fishing.... I caught one little bass, and had the most perfect call your cast type shot that started with a big thump, and before I could catch up, it'd already swam into a big laydown and I lost it. After I cooked supper, I stayed up till about 9pm waiting on a big cat to come along, had lots of bites, but couldn't ever get one to hook up. Once I went to bed, it got cold, and damp. I had a good lesson on 1 man tents, I figured it being smaller, and lighter, it'd be better for the yak, well, I'll stick with a bigger one that weighs just a tad more and takes up a tad more space from now on.

This was also the first time since I've have this kayak, that I've had it on a river. Very pleased with it's handling. One thing I noticed is with it loaded with a good amount of gear, the tracking issues really go away, also being blown around by the wind, even with the seat in the high position, and a cooler and some other stuff in the back doesn't happen as bad. Storage in the Coosa is plentiful, you could probably pack enough for a week trip if you could keep the clothes to a minimum, and pack mostly dehydrated food.

I had another close encounter of sorts, maybe leaving my lantern on though the night, played more tricks with my brain, than were really out there. But sometime after midnight, I was awaken by some serious gun fire, about 15 or so rounds along way off, and sounded like a big rifle. Being so far away it didn't bother me so I went back to bed. Sometime later I'm awaken again to the sound of fourwheelers, dogs barking then another round firing. This time it sounded alot closer, like 100 yards or so, and as soon as I heard the first shot, I heard a huge thump sound right off in the water, big carp getting spooked? .223? I don't know, I laid there knowing I would be outgunned if it came to it. Then I heard them drive alittle further, unload another mess of bullets and never heard anything else. I figure they were hog hunting, but I had no idea who and what they were doing.

Here's some pictures, enjoy.

On To The Next Hobby

I picked up a new bow the other day, its a Bowtech 82nd Airborne and its sweet. While it wasn't brand new  it looks like it is and shoots like it is, and man oh man is it fast. While bow season started about a month ago, I may still go out and give it a try, I've been shooting in my back yard and have it dead on out to 35 yards, I haven't shot it further than that but I bet my 45yd pin is pretty close.

This was the first night I had it, shooting at 20 yards, it took alittle while to get it dialed in but now its on.

And this is shooting at 35yards. I'm thinking if I replaced the pins with smaller ones it would help to shoot tighter groups at longer distances.

Dink Fest 2012

Well I finally broke my curse of kayak bass fishing with the camera filming. We went out Saturday morning with hopes of yankin some 5+lber's but as we found out, that wasn't the case. Tried several tactics but none caught the bigguns. Maybe next time. I'm just glad I got some on camera, and edited up halfway decent.

Long guns and pistols

Man oh man, why are guns so much fun. Got to take the brother in law, and wife's cousin's fiance out the other day. The cousins fiance has quite the collection of guns so that made it even more fun. One of the guns he had was an AK-47, while not full auto, it was still a blast to squeeze round after round off. Of course we had the shot guns and shot off several hundred rounds at clay pigeons. We also pulled out the pistols and did some double wielding stuff, it's kind of fun to fire off two clips at a time... Wish we'd had some tannerite to top it all off, maybe next time. All in all it was a large time.

Wax Slugs

A while back I'd picked up a flat screen TV and had kept it in my shop since we didn't have anyplace to put it in the house. So once Summer started cooling down, I got to thinking, I'd put it on our patio, so we could watch the then Rangers play. Well, everything about it was great, I'd put it out when we were out and take it in when we were done. Then, one night I forgot to put it up and the next afternoon when I went out, it was gone. And heres the dumb part, who ever got it, didn't unhook anything, just ripped it down and broke the little male screw the cable plugs into and left the power cord.

The thing about this whole ordeal that made me the most mad is that someone was on my back patio, no more than a foot from my back door and could have just as easily kicked it in came in and robbed us. So after telling some people, I learned of these slugs. Made about a dozen and boy are they bad to the bone.

Here are some 3" Black Clouds I made. I used #2&4 Steel, Black Cloud Flightstopper & Flightcontrol Steel, and #7&9 Lead BB's. The 2 3/4" shells did some work so I can only imagine what these will do.