The Fun Starts at Sunrise - Conclusion

As the boat motor starts slow and quiet, the water begins to ripple against the sideboards, and that all to familiar smell of lake water comes rushing back to greet my senses. It is a smell like no other, that will stay in my shoes and my clothes; and actually, even the boat, for weeks after we bring it back home and park it back under the shed.

I’ll admit that sometimes when our schedules are hectic and we can’t seem to make time to take the boat out, I’ll walk out under the shed and get right next to the boat and sniff as hard as I can, hoping for remaining traces of that smell I love so much.

Anyway, it’s still dark, so we’re moving slow, but picking up a little more speed as we go along. My husband who is sitting at the helm turns to me and asks me where do I want to start first? I don’t really know why he asks, because my answer is always the same – at the rocks.  It’s really the dam, but it’s a whole side with nothing but rocks – so that’s what I call it.  

I

 like starting there because the water is fairly shallow, and past fishing trips tell me that the catfish in particular like it there. Plus, there are zero places to find for shade, so if you want to fish that area for very long, you’d better do it before or right after sun-up.

So, to the rocks it was! We each caught three or four catfish and bream right off the first cast of the poles! We always use bream poles and man alive, what fun it is for a big ole’ cat to grab whatever bait we’re putting out! We always know we’re in for a bit of a fight until they either get tired or snap our pole in two – which has happened several times in the past!

We ran the boat slow and steady down the wall of rocks until two things happened: the fish seemed to stopping biting and it felt like the sun was burning blisters through our clothes – even with 70spf sunblock applied graciously!

Our next spot of choice was over near Hammock’s Creek. But once we got over there, it was already pretty situated with boaters who had already claimed their stake spots and nobody likes an encroacher!

So, we used the trolling motor to piddle from one place to another, all close to banks or lily pads, hoping to come up on a bed of one kind of fish or another. That didn’t really happen, but we did end the day with four big catfish and about 13 good-sized bream; certainly enough to consider a mess of fish!

Sometime around noon, all the fish-biting was slowing down, and the heat was rising. So we rolled our poles up, and headed back toward the dock. And as the boat was flying, I leaned out the side and let that water splash up my arms to cool me off.

In my world, there’s not much that beats a good day of fishing and I sure can’t wait to go back!