Come on spring!

I went to Arkansas several years ago and caugh hybrid stripers and white bass, the hybrids were a blast! One day I'll go back to a lake that has true stripers.

 

I like those days when you catch a little bit of everything.

 

Unless I'm fishing for crappie. Then the LM annoy me when they hit my jig. And drum. I hate drum.

 

Drum fight tho!

 

Had a buddy up north tell me about these fresh water “drum”. Are they a type of carp or something? Slightly inland from here (eastern nc), they’re introducing red drum to the lakes to kill off carp and probably everything else they see. But salt water drum can’t breed in fresh water so I assume they’re different fish.

 

kind of a trash fish...IMO. The bigger ones do fight pretty good. But we never ate the ones we caught in TX. We just through them back.

 

Bout like a bowfin then to me, used to catch them when I fished for catfish, fun to catch but just about worthless in every other way.

 

Hybrid striped bass and crappie and Blue catfish are prob the best eating fish down there

 

I'm in OK and you can catch some trout and saugeye as well. I don't fish for trout and just occassionally catch a saugeye by accident.

 

never had or caught saugeye...heard they are like a cod? We have a burbot that are supposed to be good also...

 

I’ll agree with crappie, I can half way agree with the hybrids since all we get where I live are full on stripers. Cats though I’ve yet to have to where I like it.

I’ve yet to catch a monster striper though, this is a good average for the sound side though. About 21” or so, filled up on eels and small menhaden and still eating.

 

They arent as good as the atlantic stripers...That was some good eating! But for a landlocked hybrid they are really good. Blue cats are good in smaller sizes. Flathead cats are straight up muddy.

 

Drove by one of my bank fishing spots and its about half thawed of ice! I may go check it out later this week when Im not so busy and see if the road is clear of snow/ice to get down there. But things are looking good!

 

I’ll send ya some of this 72° weather we had today, should thaw it out all the way.

 

Well spring is now here. Finally a good day on the beach.

 

ok what are they?

 

Atlantic puffer fish. Also called, blow toads or puffer toads. They’re not poisonous like some other puffers and they are very very good to eat. Here’s a little better picture.

 

cool...are they a sushi fish or do you cook them? I know very little about the ocean fish

 

lake is thawing at a great rate! Soon it will be time to fish here!

 

We're just about there! I put my dock in the water this past Thursday and had both boats out Fri and Sat but it's back down to the 30's so I plan on waiting one more week before putting the fishing boat in for the season. I had to deal with a lot of debris last year when we got a lot of rain in late April so I'm hoping this year won't be as bad. Here's a picture showing some of the debris floating down from last year. This is just after I cleared a huge jam up that was stuck under the dock. This scene repeated itself way too many times last summer so I hope this year is a lot calmer.