Tough summer finally ends

[Bender]

I moved down here to Mississippi at the beginning of the summer and I haven't really figured out the bass. It's been very slow compared to what I was used to from living in Michigan and New York where we never saw water temps in the 90s. Combine that with the fact that there are no natural lakes around me and that's all I've fished before and it made for a tough time learning what to do.

With that said every time I head to the lake I still have high hopes for a great day. This holiday weekend I have to travel for work so I decided to take off Friday afternoon and fish that evening and Saturday somewhere within 3-4 hours. I've always dreamed of fishing Pickwick for huge smallies so that's where I went, 4 hours north on US45.

Before I arrived I talked to a guy that said fishing around "the island" had been good. After looking at a map I figured he meant State Line Island so that is where I planned to go. I got there at 4:30 P.M. on Friday and launched to find 30MPH winds and 2'+ waves on the lake. I only ran about 3/4 mile and gave up and ducked into a cove. In there I found some small bass and caught my only smallmouth of the trip, an 8"er. By 6 the lake had calmed down enough to run easily so I headed out. A couple miles up on the Alabama shore there were great looking mats so I pulled in slowly to find bass busting the surface. Now I'm excited and start throwing a Super Spook, popper, and trap at them while chasing the school around. I headed out at 7:30 but it was tough leaving the fish. I hoped they would still be there in the morning. Here's the biggest from that evening, around 4#:







The State Park hours were listed as 6 A.M. to 10 P.M. so I arrived at 6:10 Saturday morning to find a nearly full parking lot. It was only 52 degrees and all I brought was shorts so it was pretty chilly. I got launched and headed out into the fog:


I went back to see of those fish were there but I didn't see any surface activity and caught nothing on topwater. After an hour I switched to sub-surface baits and started moving a little deeper. After another hour and half of trying all kinds of things I get a hit while dragging a tube. I set the hook and it is big! The fish just dives and bulldogs me. I was only using 8# mono on a medium spinning rod so it was quite a fight. Finally got him to the boat and landed:





She measured 23 1/4" x 16 3/4". After that one it took me a while to calm down. I retied the same tube and then hooked into 2 more in the same spot that both came off. I put on a new tube head and successfully caught a few more. After fishing that whole area for a couple more hours the bite slowed so I decided to move down the shore. I caught several more bass but nothing like that big one.

At 3 P.M. I stopped fishing and went to the ramp. By 4 I was headed home and met the wife for dinner at 8 back in Enterprise. What a short, but great trip.