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Secret Machines - "Now Here is Nowhere" (2004 - Reprise Records)...favorite new band this year-think Pink Floyd, with John Bon My Photographs You like photos? I love taking them. Click here, if you wanna see some of my work
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Friday, Jul. 02, 2004 - 6:23 p.m. What a day to leave the camera at home. Lease put in for this day off back in January. We noticed on the calendar that the 4th of July landed on a Sunday, meaning she (and I) would be getting Monday the 5th off for the holiday. Why not use up some of her 3rd week of vacation days for long weekends, especially when you can tie them to 3-day weekends. So she did. Of course, in January you have no way of knowing what the weather would be like 6 months later. We figured if it was really hot, or storms were in the area, we could always hit a movie or do a little shopping. When we rose from bed this morning, the weather forecasters had moved the chance for thunderstorms up to this evening (after saying they would be here by noon when we went to bed last night). Rain is falling in the counties around us as I type this, but has mostly stayed away from us today. I loaded everything up into the boat this morning, and we were headed to N.P.P.Lake by 8:30. Our goal today? I rally wanted to try a method of fishing for catfish known as �drifting�. You drive your boat as far as possible into the wind until you reach the area where the wind is entering the body of water you are fishing. From there, you turn your boat so it is sitting parallel to the wind, cast a couple of lines into the water with weights that will take your bait to the bottom of the lake, and then let the wind slowly push you over areas that should contain catfish. As we were headed to the wind entry point, we passed another bost with a father and son who were doing just this method of fishing. I slowed down enough to ask him how he was doing. He said he had had a few bites, but hadn�t landed a catfish just yet. I picked his mind a little, hoping for some tips 9he was using cut shad, a baitfish that is plentiful in our waters), and thanked him for his time. As we were leaving his area, he told me one little bit of info that made our day special: he had seen a few �stripers� , as he called them, working the surface near the drop-off at the bridge. Now, this was good news to us. Lease loves to catch white bass, and what he might have though was hybrid striped bass could most likely be just plain white bass (a related species, but only � pound to maybe 3 pounds large, compared to over 320 pounds for the much large stripers). I pulled the boat up within 309 feet of the bridge and sure enough , the fish were consistently breaking the surface. That meant they were actively feeding on baitfish. I changed one of our poles over to a Roostertail�, my favorite summertime white bass lure. This is a type of spinner, and metal lure with a rotating blade that moves as fast as you retrieve it, catching the eye of any aggressively feeding fish. Enough definitions. How did we do, right? In around 3 hours of steady fishing, we landed over 100 fish. How many, I have no idea. Here is what we caught: Close to or over 100 white bass/hybrid stripers. How many of each, I can�t tell you. The undersized stripers look so much like the mature white bass, you have to count the spines on their back fin to be sure which is which. I only kept 6 fish today (the fish cleaning station was closed for repair, and I didn�t want to haul a ton of fish home uncleaned in the 90�+ heat), and 2 were definitely striped bass. These fish were both close to 3 pounds, and around 18� long. If they were whites, they would have been two of the largest I have ever caught, so I am leaning towards them being stripers. 7 crappie on the same spinners. Half might n=have been large enough to keep, but all were released. I also played around with the drift rig (using whole nightcrawlers), and caught several drum perch this way (one was 21 � long, maybe 4 pounds. Don�t generally eat these fish, but they were fun to catch anyway) and another 10 or so bluegills that were brave enough to be feeding in deeper water. Considering it was so warm 9like I said- over 90�), this has to be considered as good as it gets for this time of the year. All of these fish were caught in an area that might have been 125� by 150�. I finally just dropped the anchor so I didn�t have to keep repositioning the boat against the current running underneath the bridge. We lost a total of 1 Roostertail� all day, along with 2 or 3 bait hooks tat were swallowed by the fish feeding on my nightcrawlers. That, in my book, is a very successful day on the water� Time to sign off. J-rod just showed up with his son (KADEN, not Kayden, as I have told is the proper way to spell his name) and his mom, Jules. Codeman and the lovely Chelsea are soon to arrive, and I have fish in need of frying (along with hot dogs, for the non-fish consumers of the group). If I don�t get back on here the rest of this holiday weekend, I hope y�all have a great one too�
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