Mississippi River - 9/27/09

Mark and I hit the river about 7:30 this morning. It was a beautiful morning. Crisp air, fog rolling off the river and a smooth ride to our first spot. We were targeting white bass again. We were fishing a dike break between two islands and the water really flows through there. We got nothing on our first spot so we decided to move. This time we headed out to the main river. We fished a U shaped dike on the outside, main cannel side. We caught 2 at this location. Then we moved over to the ouside, bank side of the dike. Again, we caugh two and I had one on, run straight at me and then under the boat. I had my drag too tight and as he went under the boat he came off the hook. He had that pole doubled over. I know it was a good fish. The key to this spot was we were sitting in about 2 feet of water on the inside current break and fishing out in the current where it dropped to about 8 feet. I think they were sitting on that ridge. Anyway, we worked our way down river fishing the same spot on 2 other dikes, but they produced nothing. Then we fished the backside of a partially submerged dike and caught 2 more. This spot has a LOT of potential. The back side of the dike has some sand on it and the water rolls over the rocks and creates a lot of turbulance. Then it drops to about 10 feet. We went back to our first spot and fished the opposite side which only produced a drum (on a spinner bait at that). It was a good day and we pulled out at Noon. A big thank you to Mark for going along. We've been trying to do this for quite a while. Now to get Matt Douglas out on the water with me!

Driveway Fishing...

 


We threw everything from lead weights to a pink butterfly.. no fish ... They did catch me a few times though. :)

Mississippi River - 9/20/2009

My brother-in-law, Dave, and I hit the river around 7:00 this morning. There was a slight drizzle coming down, with temps in the 60's (both ambient & water). We were going to target whites and wipers. We headed to the first dike I wanted to try and started casting into the current break. Both using crank baits, after a few casts & about 15 minutes, I wanted to tie on a different crank. As I'm re-tying, I was trying to explain to Dave how the stripes fight and how much fun they are, and BLAMO, Dave says, oh, here's one. After the first one we caugh a couple more and the rain started coming down. We also caught 2 drum on crank baits. As the fish quit biting, and the rain started to realy dump on us, we decided to call it quits. We were home by 9:00.

Of course it stopped raining by 10:30, but we were already done for the day. We'll try to get out again real soon.

Mississippi River - 9/6/2009

Today Adam and I took a trip out on the river. We were just going out to get a line wet and get out on the boat. We started by working the downstream side of a dike. Adam was using a snake and I was tossing a crank bait. This produced nothing, so we switched up to plastics and still nothing. We then started working some laydowns on the upstream side of the dike. We flipped jigs, tossed crank baits, threw spinners, you name it, we threw it but produced nothing. We didn't have much time but decided to work the current break where the water came around the end of the dike. We were both working the crank bait and it produced two stripers (or whites, or hybrids, or whatever they are). One was about 9 inches, the other was 13.5". These things put up a great fight. The bigger one was stripping line of my spool and was really giving it it's all. It was a lot of fun. I'll be targeting them again on my next trip out. -cld

Dove Season - Opening Day 2009

Dove season opened this past Tuesday, and as we usually do, Les and I took the day off to go throw lead and see if we could knock a few down. Gary met us at Greg & Cindy's before sun-up and we took our places. We had standing corn on one side and soybeans on another with a telephone line at the split. This typically produces birds for us. However, on this cool opening day, there were just not many birds flying. I ended up getting 5 but lost one in the soybeans. Les and Gary each got one, and around 11:00 we gave up. We hadn't seen a bird in over an hour and just got discouraged. Come to find out Brad went down that evening and nearly limited out. I heard other stories that as the day went on, the birds started coming in.

We went down again on Saturday morning. Got there before sun-up again, but sat in the barn for a couple of hours as the rain just kept coming down. Finally around 9:00 or so the rain lightened up enough that a few birds were moving around. We shot at a couple that were probably too far to shoot, but when you've been sitting for so long, you'll shoot at anything. Then we walked across the field (the corn was now cut) towards a small patch of tree. One bird flew in and any of us could have shot it, but I pulled my trigger first and that was our only bird of the day.

Saturday night I cooked all the birds for some friends and they were really good. I filet them off the breast bone then put a piece of pepper jack cheese and a jalapeno slice between the two halves. Wrap the whole thing with half a slice of bacon and put a toothpick through it to hold it all together. Once on the grill, we dab them in barbecue sauce just before we pull them off the grill. They are delicious! - cld