Fishermen are having to be flexible during current conditions
Thunder, lightning, wind and, last but not least, rain tormented Mississippi fishermen statewide the past week. When the weather wasn’t the problem, its lasting effects — high, muddy and swift waters — were.
But at least a few fishermen were able to figure out an answer and beat the conditions. It was easy for some, not for others.
Those with the advantage were those that live near, adjacent or on their favorite fishing holes. Billy Thomas of Hattiesburg fits in that category.
“What I was able to do was hit and run between storms, and fish my subdivision lake and catch bream,” said Thomas. “The big bulls were still on the beds even though the full moon phase had completed its cycle. I used crickets and wore out the big males.”
By keeping a live basket in the water, Thomas said he was able “to fill up an ice chest over four or five days of fishing, going an hour or two here, and then an hour later.”
To break up the monotony, Thomas tried a test he’d read about a year ago in a newspaper feature — live crickets vs. soft plastic fakes. The winner?
“Me,” he said, answering the question quickly. “I caught them both ways, and I had a ball trying. I don’t think the soft plastics will ever be a match for the real thing.”
D.D. Smith of Ridgeland had a similar story with bass, but with a twist.
“With the skies overcast for a week, the fish were off the structure in the two private lakes I fish, and they bit like crazy,” he said. “I had a lot of fun with topwaters, like the Scum Dog version of the frog, buzzbaits and Pop-Rs. If I threw it they hit it. I started trying to find something they wouldn’t hit. I went through single- and tandem-blade spinnerbaits, soft and hard jerkbaits and shallow crankbaits.
“They were on everything. Two weeks ago in all that heat and sun, those same lakes were holding fish on deep cover and it was all slow worm fishing. This week they were up on the banks, both the shallow banks and on the dams. Bam! Bam! Bam!”
Finding other fishing reports was easy. Finding good ones was hard.
Most people just wrote off the week to the bad weather. Gulf captains had most marsh trips cancelled, although the big blue water boats were able to handle the rough seas and catch big fish in the Mississippi Gulf Coast Billfish Classic in Biloxi. Five blue marlin were weighed, including a 721.7-pound winner, and another 14 tagged and released. Other winners included a 197-pound yellowfin tuna, a 68.7-pound wahoo and a 53.2-pound dolphin.
The final regular season event of the Magnolia Crappie club was held at Wolf Lake, where the father-son team of Charles and Charles Lindsay Jr. of Pelahatchie caught a 7-fish limit of 10.21 pounds in “7 to 10 feet of the muddiest water you’ll ever see,” said the elder Lindsay. “We just slow trolled minnows and jigs and managed a decent limit.”
While the Lindsays left Wolf with the winning check, others left with horror stories courtesy of flying carp.
“It’s downright scary,” said veteran Rabbit Rogers of Brandon. “We started up the lake and they started jumping. You see those videos of the fish jumping behind the boat and all, but let me tell you, they jump in back of you, both sides of you and in front of you, and they come at you like rockets.
“I stopped a few hundred yards up and grabbed a paddle and held the blade end of it up in front of my face. If one of those things hit me in the head or chest, it’d kill me.”
As it was, Rogers reported that several landed in his boat, but he and his partner Pat Jefcoats left uninjured but shaken.
“People need to watch out on all Delta oxbows that the river reached in last year’s flood,” Rogers said. “I heard the carp are just as bad at Bee, Little Eagle and Washington. A friend told me it was really bad at Chotard and Albermarle, especially that connecting chute between those two lakes.”
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