Feeling Feverish and Achy!

[jdmidwest]

Because I have been out in the Sun Fishing All Weekend!  Sunburn and sore muscles.  For the first time since the first weekend in Feb, I had a weekend chance to get to TN and do some fishing.

Started south at 4 am Sat. morn and saw my last face mask at the rest area in SE MO.  Met my Doctor Buddy at Gibson County Lake to try some crappie fishing.  Something different for a change.  As usual, I am not  a crappie fisherman and started catching bass on my lure.  He ended up with several bass too, a nice big redear, several bluegill, and one dink crappie.  The lake was packed, TN opened the flood gate early and the lake was full of boats.  Had to wait to pull out at noon while a Professional Fisher in a nice big $40k rig put his stuff in his boat, then let his wife put her stuff in the boat, all while sitting smack dab in the middle of the 2 lane ramp at the crack of noon as the 20 mph wind was driving everyone else off.  Everyone gave him the nice big one finger salute for a job well done.

Off to Pickwick, decided to fish the river below the dam, it was down to 77k cfps and just barely fishable.  First notch I hit, second cast, nice 5 lb cat came to boat.  It will make a nice meal this week.  We ended up boating about 50 fish before dark, mostly smallies and a few kentuckys, nothing over 3 lbs.  Did catch a few white bass to go with the cat and a big skip jack.

Fished the lake today, wind was already up this morning at launch, rough ride to the first spot.  Boated a few fish today, but it was tough.  Ended up finessing about 20 bass, but nothing better than a 3 lb smallie.  Light jigs or ned rigged worms on light tackle fished very slow caught them all.  Spawn is over and post spawn feed up has not seemed to pick up yet down there.  Water temps were pretty cool at 64 and lake was slightly above summer pool.  Lots of pleasure boat traffic.  The subdivision looked like a holiday weekend.  Temp was  86 when we pulled out and I went thru 2 big storms and hail coming back.  Jackson Tn had power outages with 70 mph wind.

Tennessee opened back up this weekend.  State Parks were allowing campers again, boat ramps in them opened too.  We sit down last nite and had BBQ in a restaurant with many other people and traffic in Jackson was about like normal.  Like I say, I did not see a mask after I left MO.  But the Cstores and one BBQ restaurant was only place stopped.  Concessionaire at county lake only allowed 2 people in shop at a time and all chain restaurants were still drive thru only.

[jdmidwest]

One week later and still no Covid.  Front jacked up the fishing this weekend.