Saturday morning

[chappyman66]

Sometimes you have to do other things.
Smallmouth, largemouth, pike.
Biggest pike was 24" but plenty fun to catch.
Good morning with my wife.

[mattb]

Great Paul. Good day of fishing. Bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work!!

[chappyman66]

Absolutely!

[FC47]

Nice fish guys,
Paul, Matt couldn't have said it better!

[Broman62]

DITTO......AWESOME CHAPPY...GREAT CATCHES

[waaytoomuchintothis]

Chappy! Those are nice looking Bass. I haven't been fishing in many years, but I remember that flash of color on the sides when you knew it was a good panfish. Where I lived we didn't have Pike, but we had horrible Alligator Gars, which we shot or baseball batted off our lines when we caught them. Too dangerous to touch. Turtle meat!

Just a note, today, on the way home from the grocery, we came to a narrow bridge that had traffic backed up on the other side of the road. We stopped to see what was up, and sure enough, there was a huge water turtle crossing the road, about a foot across, slowly plodding on the hot roadway. So, the 5 cars opposing me, and the 3 behind me, all sat still and watched as the old fossil plodded along to safety on the other side. I suspect he was too big to go through the culverts under the road to the rest of the lake on the other side of the road. When he was safe, everybody was laughing and waving at each other passing by. Nice. He wouldn't have made good soup, anyway- wrong kind of turtle and too old. Snapping Turtles are the best for soup, and it removes predators from the fish pond. Its so good, you can fake it with other meats, in which case it is called Cooter Stew.

[Pappy]

I'm glad to hear everyone waited for the turtle to cross the road. I see turtles crushed (especially Snapping Turtles) on the road all the time. I think a lot of people do it on purpose. Pisses me off.

[chappyman66]

I wouldn't mind fishing for alligator gar some time....sounds like an interesting time.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

They are the nemesis of living things all along the Mississippi River, and they have invaded all the TVA lakes, plus more. The dorsal and pectoral fins are covered with poisonous spines that will send you to a hospital, and their size and shape, like Pike or Sturgeon, is unlimited- they live a long time. My first pistol was bought specifically because I was going fishing where the gars are. A .38 shot shell with #9 shot is the safest way to handle the bastards.

[Cgyracer]

Awesome pictures!!! Great day!
Rob

[Pappy]

Paul, did you catch anything with that bait in the pictures.

I used a Smallmouth about that big when I caught a catfish on the Ohio River that was so big we didn't have a scale big enough to weigh it. So I took a picture of it and the picture weighed eight pounds.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

That joke is so old, the last time I heard it, dirt hadn't been invented yet!

[Pappy]

Joke!! Who told a joke? lol

You probably won't believe I caught a 12 pound Bluegill in Lake Erie either. Next time I find another 1 pound grasshopper I'm going to catch another one.

[chappyman66]

Pretty much any of that would have been decent bait if I was fishing next door on Minnetonka for muskie (although using game fish as bait is illegal in MN).
Auburn is a pretty small lake, although my wife took a 4lb largemouth out of there a couple years ago. Not many lakes have decent smallmouth, so that was a pleasant surprise.

[waaytoomuchintothis]

We did get the occasional 6 or 8 pound Largemouth, but the favorite dinner was White Slab Crappie, delicious pan fried over a campfire with just salt&pepper, plus lemon and hot sauce on the plate. At the TVA lakes, 3-4 pound Crappie (White Slab and Black), practically jump into the boat, with tiny spinner baits, on ultralight tackle. Those were good days in the 1970s.