After working in the yard all day on Saturday Lisa and I drove over to Bass Pro for some shopping and then across the street from Bass Pro to a little seafood restaurant called “The Red Crawfish”. They have a few things on the menu that reminds me of living in Louisiana. We got back to the lake just before dark and decided to go out in the boat for a while. I had just repaired the lower unit in our bass boat after it gobbled up a few yards of fluorocarbon. I wanted to stay close to the house with the newly repaired lower unit. We hit a few points in the back of the creek and we found a few willing bass. Last weekend Mercer and I were on Clarks Hill and I did well on a little jerkbait I made called “The Zebra Shad”. I really wanted to get it wet on Lanier and see if the spotted bass were interested in the pattern. We hit our first point in the creek and on my third cast I picked up a dink which made me feel great. It was a spot, however small, it was my first spotted bass on Lanier with the new bait. Shortly after the first, I nailed another spot in the same area, only a little bigger. Man, I was really happy to see the jerkbait working so well. We moved on out further towards the mouth of the creek and on the next point, a striper decided to have my only Zebra Shad for dinner. It was right at dark and a striper chased the jerkbait back to the boat a opened his big cake eater right at the side of the boat and like a dummy, I let him have it. He tore off with it and my drag on my little spinning reel with 6lb test was set just a bit to tight and the line snapped as he made his escape. That ended our evening and we headed back to the house.
The next morning we got up and hit the creek again at about 8am for round 2. Right off the bat I hook a big crappie on a brand new zebra pattern jerkbait I went and retrieved from the shop. The crappie was pretty good sized and a nice first fish of the morning. To make a long story short, Lisa was working a little square bill Sexy Shad crank bait and I did nothing but throw the zebra shad for the next 3 hours. We lost count of how many fish we caught, mainly because there were a lot of dinks to wade through.

We ended up with around an 8lb sack if we were counting but on the last fish of the day it finally happened. After years and years of bare handing fish, a #4 Diiachi Death Trap treble hook found it’s way into the meaty part of my left thumb. It buried itself all the way to the bone with a 2lb spotted bass flipping around with the other treble buried in his lip. I hadn’t felt that kind of pain in a while. After I got the bass under control and released we headed back to the house for some self surgery on my thumb. I dug up a pair of sturdy wire cutters too cut the hook when the time came. First I popped the end of the hook out of the bone and then took the needle nose pliers and turned the hook upward. Once I got the hook pointed in the right direction, the painful process of working it back through the skin began. I will say this, those Diiachi hooks made it a little easier to get it back through the surface of my thick, tough thumb skin. Finally after a final painful bloody push, the barb shot through the surface of my thumb and I was able to get the wire cutters on the back side of the treble and cut it free. I grabbed the barb with the needle nose and pulled the remaining part of the hook from my thumb. After a good soaking in Hydrogen Peroxide I was kicking back watching the Nascar race. Although the larger fish were few and far between in the back of the creek, it was a nice day to be out, even with the painful ending. Here’s a quick video of a few of our fish, including the big crappie.