Friday Fishing

[abkeenan]

Friday put in at Gage's and hit a bluffend right after the mo/ark line and picked up a nice white on a wiggle wart on the first cast and then nothing after that. Then motored down to cricket only to find that everyone and their brother was out and about. A boat was seriously on every single bank/point. When we passed cricket creek marina around 9am there were 8 trucks on the ramp...when we came back and hour later there was at least triple that. Went to the very back of cricket and shad were all over but we just couldnt get the whites to bite or anything else for that matter. Saw 3 guys fishing from the bank for white and never saw them land a fish. Left there and went towards yokkum sp? and there were even MORE boats down there. Hit one bank we could actually get on with a wart with no takers and we decided it was just too crowded and every point and bank had been beat to death so we motored back to brushy creek. Around noon i caught my best fish ever on TR. Was just mentioning to my dad and brother that maybe we should go grab some lunch and get ready for the MIZZOU game and not more than 10 seconds after i said that while i was letting my Norman Flake sit there in 20 ft of water over some cedars WHAM almost jerked the pole out of my hand. Not kidding. Not huge compared to most of the guys standards here on OAF but for me who gets down to TR for about 3 weekends a year it is my best to date. Went 4.6 on my digital scale. Released unharmed. Fished for another 20 min or so and went to watch Mizzou beat up on Clemson so a pretty good day for me. And as was mentioned by some other people in other posts....fishing behavior by boaters has just gotten to the point to where i am seriously thinking about bringing a paintball gun with me in the boat. I cant tell you how many times guys would either blow by when there was plenty of water to get further away or just flat cut you off going down a bank by like 50-100 yards. The jack@ss in a red/silver/white ranger who was fishing brushy creek at 5:45pm on Friday afternoon you need to get a clue pal. Blatant disregard for fishing etiquette. My grandfather taught me a when i was first starting out as a fisherman about how to give other boats space and he would NEVER just pull up and start fishing in front of a guy coming down a bank in that direction. NEVER. He would roll over in his grave if he saw the way that some anglers act. Anywho. Sorry for the rant. Other than some of the rudeness great day. GO TIGERS!

[techo]

The bad thing is that the behaviour is coming from fisherman. No big tournaments and the big boats aren't even racing around yet.