Extraordinary measures

I’ve been getting dozens of emails asking when I would have another “Adventures of George” fishing story! Okay, really, I only got one…and it was from George. George and I take pride in the fact that we never get skunked when we go fishing (Well, occasionally when we take Little George.. and by the way, I did get quite a few emails asking not to talk about Little George. Those, however, were all from Little George himself).

After reading the fishing report in lakedarbonnelife.com Tuesday it sounded like the fish were biting some, so we decided to go Wednesday morning. Knowing that the torrential rains from Friday would have a good part of D’Arbonne pretty muddy, we headed south for the Big Lake where I figured it would be the most clear. I was wrong. The muddy water had already moved there and fishing was extremely slow. In fact, it was so slow that after two hours, we had not caught a bass. I didn’t even see a shad jump. As usual, we had gone to the wrong place at the wrong time. We rode up towards the bridge later and the water was already clearing there.  George did have a couple of bream run off with his heavy plastic “Havoc” lure. By the way, despite its name, that lure did not create any havoc on the bass this day.

At one little brush top, George jerked back and set the hook. There was no fish to show for it.  “Must have been a bream,” he said.

Knowing George’s expertise in having taps on his worm believed to be bream and being a quick thinker myself, I immediately took extraordinary measures to prevent us from getting skunked. I reached into the rod box and grabbed a mini-cast and threw a little bream bait out by the same bush. BAM! The fight was on. Two seconds later, I boated a four-ounce bream. Skunk Avoided!  It was the only fish we caught all morning.

With the pressure off, we tried a couple of other places. I eased out across middle of the lake and we fished a popular area where an old submerged railroad tram bed runs across the lake. The water on both sides is about 7-10 feet deep and it’s 4-5 feet deep on top of the hump with lots of stumps. Surely there would be a fish here.  Nope. Not today.

George’s little lunch/tackle box

“The train must have scared them off,” George said.

I began to hum an old Credence Clearwater Revival song trying to act like I didn’t hear him. George picked up the dainty little tackle box that he brought his favorite three lures in and tried a different one. It kind of looked like a second-graders soft-sided lunch box, but I was disappointed to learn it didn’t have any snacks in there for us. It was insulated, by the way, and an ice cream sandwich would have been nice. It was, however, the only thing I’ve ever seen that had more pockets on it than his Cabella’s Adventurer short britches, though.

We checked our watches and the major biting period had come and gone. For those that wonder if the Solunar Tables really work or not, I must make note that we did catch ALL our fish right at the peak of the major a.m. time. Sorry. That’s all I’ve got. But, to paraphrase coach Red Beaulieu from “The Water Boy“,  we lived to “fish” another day.