Time for Some Trout

I am going to be a ripe old 32 this Friday, and the lovely wife and I have decided to spend the weekend at our cabin on Possum Kingdom lake. I plan to fart around with all my tackle and respool my rods for spring. The boat also needs a little preventative maintanence and such. It should be a nice leasurely weekend away from town. The TPWD releases trout into several rivers and ponds every winter, and they just happened to release several thousand last week below the dam of the lake.

Hopefully there are still some there. It sure would be fun to catch a few with the wife on our ultralight equipment. These guys are generally very small, a 14" fish would be a monster, but they put up a nice fight on a very light rod with 2# test line. I have not really fished much in the last two years, but I am very much looking forward to this year, and hope to get quite a few weekends in at the lake.

Fishing in an Actual Tournament Tomorrow

Yep, me and the Beautiful Conservative, are fishing in a tournament on Lake Bridgeport tomorrow. Supposedly lots of numbers of smaller bass are being caught. We should be able to easily bring in a small limit to weigh in. Of course we have heard this before and not caught a damn thing.

We have to get up at 4:00 AM and head to the lake for the take off at safe light. I am really looking forward to it. I always have a good time at the tournaments whether I catch anything or not. We only fish our club tournaments. We are members of the Bass Club of Fort Worth. It is a great little club, that is very family oriented.

First Fishing Trip in Over a Year!

I took last Friday and Monday off for some much needed R&R. We went out to our cabin at Possum Kingdom Lake Saturday, and stayed until Sunday.

As usual I picked the worst weekend possible to vacation. Friday, major tornado-producing thunderstorms rolled through the area. This prevented us from leaving for the lake Friday evening. So we get down there Saturday, and three foot rollers are coming off the lake. No fishing on Saturday! Sunday morning we mess around at the cabin for a while and get on the lake at about 10:30 AM.

We launched the boat for the first time in over a year and all went well. It ran like a top. We decided to fish an area known as Neely Slough. The lake has had a lot of golden algae problems over the last 5 years or so, and this area was supposed to be doing rather well.

After fishing for about four hours we had no bass in the boat. It was not to surprising. We are out of practice, and several factors were working against us. For starters, that front came through. The fish are also mostly in the post spawn phase at the moment, so they aren't that easy to find. We did however catch 11 sand bass in about twenty minutes in one spot. That is a good sign! Last year we didn't get a bite on the lake at all!

Overall I was pleased with the trip. The boat checked out, and is thankfully ready to roll.

Monday the FIL and I fished Lake Worth. We got started about 7:30, and immediately he caught a decent keeper bass. We started fishing around an island of loose cattails, and really thought we were going to have a good day. We caught two more nice keepers, and a few small fish. At this point we decided to head to a nearby bank for some cranking action. This proved to be a mistake. We committed the cardinal sin of bass fishing. Never leave fish to find fish. After that we caught a couple fat crappie and I believe one more small bass all day long. We didn't catch another fish after 10:15 or so. The wind picked up so we couldn't really fish the area with the cattails very well.

It was a great trip though. Beautiful day, and we caught some fish. What more can you ask for really? I am hoping to fish either Lake Weatherford, or Worth again this weekend sometime.

Finally

Come hell or high water, I will be doing some fishing with my woman this weekend. It is required!

So we haven't fished in over a year, and I have been slowly preparing for a while now. The boat seems good to go. I am going to get new tags for the trailer this weekend and it will be all legit. Maybe I can find a new prop Friday as well, since the current one is beat to hell.

I am going to start spooling up all the rods tonight, and hopefully go through our tackle this week as well. Then it will be on to Possum Kingdom. If we don't do any good there, I may try out Graham Sunday morning. I can hardly wait!

Fishin' Fever!

I got it bad. Having not been able to fish in the last year, the bass are calling my name. About a month ago I removed all the line from my rods and cleaned them all up. All the reels seem to be in great shape, so they are good to go.

A few weeks ago we retrieved our boat from it's desolate Purgatory of our friend's driveway. The poor thing hasn't been in the water in a year. Yesterday we pulled her out of the garage and put some fuel treatment in the tank with the old gas that is in there. I put some air in the tires and took her for a spin to mix the gas. Thankfully she started right up. So that is another hopefully good to go item. I also plugged in our trolling motor battery. Hopefully it is still good and will take a charge.

All my tackle looks to be in excellent shape. None of the soft plastics melted over the summer, and all the compartments managed to stay dry. Everything is just how I last left it.

The next thing to do is re-register the boat and trailer. Then we should be fairly good to go. Hopefully the boat will run as expected once we get it on the lake. Oh yeah, I get to give the BRA $50 so I can have the privilege of launching my boat at our private boat ramp, and use our private dock. Somehow this new sticker fee is supposed to draw more people to the lake(Possum Kingdom Lake). Yeah, OK!

The fish are apparently back at PK. The FIL has fished a couple of tournaments in recent months down there, and did real well the first time. He said there are lots of small fish to catch, which is fine with me. We plan on getting out to the lake house hopefully every other weekend this summer. I will probably end up leaving the boat up there all summer.

I plan to get the kids into some sand bassin' for sure. The sandies are the most plentiful fish around at PK, so it shouldn't be to hard to find some birds working or something. If all else fails I had good luck trolling for them last year at Grapevine and Richland Chambers. It was pretty fun actually, just tool along until you feel one on the line and reel them in.

May be able to get into some catfish some too. I plan on spending a lot of time on this lake, so I can learn it better.