I’m pretty sure I’m losing my mind, but lucky for me, it’s a slow process and sometimes it’s downright entertaining along the way. Over the past few days, I’ve realized that burping babies is just about as much fun as catching a bass out in the creek. Don’t get me wrong, I’m old and I was burping babies back before that kinda thing was cool for me, but here recently I’ve found a new love for the technique and with the right rhythm of back patting I can generate some huge burps in these twins. It’s like the different rhythms of the Berkley 130 Choppo, sometimes when you hit the right rhythm with the Choppo, you can generate some huge blow-ups and in the case of burping babies, if I hit the right rhythm of back patting, I can generate some huge blow-outs. That’s my job around here this week, feeding, burping and entertainment of the twin infant guests. It’s kinda like being a Plane Captain for babies instead of fighter jets.

Between hours of babysitting, cooking and wandering around aimlessly, wondering why I came into a room, I’ve found time to go out on the lake and wet a line. This week I spent more time out on the main lake poking around humps and points just to see what’s happening. When I was looking through my YouTube page for videos I had made around this time of the year, I found a video from a few years back and I was already catching fish on the Spybait. That raised my brow and got me to thinking about a fresh spool of 6lb Tatsu flouro that has been sitting on my bar for the last 2 weeks. I got that spool specifically for 2 techniques, the spybait and the drop shot/pitch shot. I use 6lb Tatsu for both during the summer and it’s just about time to get that rigged up and ready. For ya’ll that are new to the drop shot, here’s a video I made a few years back for pre-rigging your drop shot rigs. Lisa and I drop shot a lot during the summer and the bottom line is that if you’re not getting hung up from time to time, you’re doing it wrong. Sometimes we need to replace a rig in a hurry, and this makes it quick. There are different ways to rig your drop shot and this is just a rig I use.

Another observation from my trips out on the water this week was the presence of more topwater activity, as a matter of fact, it was helpful in catching a few of my fish this week. It wasn’t every stop I made this week but on a few of the stops I made this week I saw surfacing fish. They wouldn’t stay up long but long enough for me to get to the area and make a cast with the weightless fluke or the emerald popper. What little time I had to fish this week, those two baits produced the bulk of my fish. The popper was driving the stripers crazy out on a windy main lake point in the chop. It was kinda comical to watch some of the stripers come out of the water around the bait and I couldn’t tell if the near misses were intentional or were they just missing the mark. The stripers were rather large, so I was kinda glad I didn’t connect with one. There are two outcomes to hooking a large striper out on a main lake point in the wind; either you are going to land it, or he’s going to win the battle and break off one way or another. Generally, on Lanier, the striper is going to look for brush or timber at some point if there is any around, so I like to keep my rod tip high to keep his head upward during the fight. I don’t like losing bass lures to topwater stripers, but I still enjoy the battle on occasion. The popper did produce a few bass this week and it also provided me with hope after some near misses from some bigger bass. I was definitely able to call a few to the surface with the popper, whether they connected or not was a different story. This week it was the popper and fluke combo over brush and out on random main lake points in the wind. You could roll the dice and start with topwater when you get to the brush, but if you strike out with the topwater, sometimes it scatters the fish so at times it may be better to try a more silent approach to brush. I’ve often times made a cast and see numerous fish on my graph that had followed my topwater bait back to the boat but they didn’t react to it. Those fish generally go to the bottom after seeing the boat and it’s for that reason that I approach the brush in stealth mode if the fish aren’t reacting to topwater. A lot of these noisy type topwater baits can scatter the fish and spoil the bite at times so I like to test the waters and make brush pile approaches in stealth mode as well as the “bull in a China closet” or “death from above” mode.

It’s getting to be that time of year here on Lanier and the baits that could possibly be on my deck right now are walking baits, popping baits, plopping baits, swimming baits, spinning baits, jerking baits, spybaits and dropping the wiggly stuff around brush. That’s just what I have going. The water temps are probably low 70’s this morning out in the creek and the corps is moving water according to the amount of water between my dock and dry land. The lake level is over a feet below full pool and dropping. Here’s a few fish from my trips out this week.

My other job this week has been to entertain, feed and burp the babies. This is little Lainey learning all about selfies and the last picture is my main view this week, little Lainey girl and big Tater bug.