Month: October 2024

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Fighting the Navy Commando

When I reminisce about my time out west while in the Navy, the memories can come and go, some never return (thankfully), and are lost forever but there are others that stay in my mind because of the significance of the event. I know I told this story a few years back on a local podcast and I’m pretty sure Lisa has heard it at least a half dozen times, but I still like telling it because it was one of my more memorable near-death experiences while in the Navy. In my latter years in the Navy, I developed a successful process by which I would analyze a situation and the outcome of my actions. It’s called “Operational Risk Management”, or ORM for short. It is a process by which I would ask myself if it was worth doing, not worth doing, or maybe even overdoing it a little bit. In some situations, the process is not worth doing, but when you add a couple cold drinks, good ORM can turn into bad ORM in a hurry.

I was going on my tenth year in the Navy and by then I had it all figured out. I was at my peak when it came to being bullet-proof and some may argue that I was too stupid to be scared during that period of my life. Being in a F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron had that effect on young sailors like me and I learned very quickly after joining the squadron that you had to be tough to be in the squadron. The Tomcat was an older fighter, and it always had older aircraft problems. Every day I went into work, there was something different to work on. They say that it took 72 man-hours to fly the Tomcat one flight hour, and I don’t dispute that for a minute. I’ve seen everything from squirrels invading our hanger at night and chewing through bundles of wiring in the aircraft avionics bays to exploding engines and subsequent flaming fireballs on engine startups. It was hard work for sure, but you know what they say, work hard, play hard. That’s what I did, I still don’t know why I played hard, but I guess my brain wasn’t fully developed so I did stupid stuff from time to time. For some reason I liked to hang out in bars during this time period, more specifically, bars with pool tables so I could pass the time shooting pool. Since I was a boy, I spent time in the pool halls. My grandfather would take me when I was young and while he played dominoes with his veteran friends, I would occupy my time in the back of the bar playing pool. I’ve always played pool somewhere. Even now I have a billiard room complete with a 9-foot table to remind me of earlier times and the fun I’d had over the years playing pool.

When my roommate Frank and I rented a house out in Santee, a suburb of San Diego, we found a local bar with a pool table just down the road from our house. Our house had a pool table, but we liked to hang out at the bar, drinking beer and shooting pool from time to time. After we got to know the bartender and the owner of the bar, Frank and I joined a coed billiard team that consisted of myself, Frank and two women we had met at the bar that like to shoot pool. We had befriended Teri and Lisa, our partners and teammates, both single and they were pretty good pool players. We decided to form a coed team and shoot pool in a local pool league that traveled around to different bars in the area and competed with other coed teams. It was a lot of fun, and it was pretty cool to compete with other pool players to match my skill against others. Between the four of us, we were pretty competitive and personally, I loved the attention of having an audience while shooting pool in competition.

This was the early 90’s and back then there was no internet to surf or cell phones to call people on a whim, and one way of meeting people to date was the classified ads in the newspaper. In San Diego there was a dating service or “dating club” in the classified ads that guaranteed one fully vetted date each month for a year for $100.00 a month and you had to pay for something like 6 months up front. The dating service catered to the upper income crowd who wanted to be more discrete in their social life, and that’s where Lisa came in. She was a very successful realtor in the San Diego area, and she wanted to meet a man who was very financially stable, and looking for a partner in her age group, which was late forties to early fifties at the time. It was her first date since joining the dating club and she was excited. She knew very little about her date, other than that he was in his late forties and an officer in the military, but she was very optimistic. They had discussed a Friday night outing for dinner, and drinks afterwards at our local bar. It was all set up and Lisa wanted a way out of the date just in case things weren’t going well, so that’s where I came in. Lisa wanted me to hang out at the bar for a while and she would give me a report after they got to the bar and after Lisa got to know Bill. The fact that I was in the Navy, and bullet proof of course, may come in handy later in her evening if the guy turned out to be a flake. If he was a weirdo, then the date would end at the bar, and I would give Lisa a ride back home. That was the plan.

I gotta say that I was a little skeptical about the dating service that Lisa had joined. I worried that there may be some rich men with bad morals in the dating site and I wondered how well the men were vetted. The night finally came, and I was poised at a barstool positioned at the very end of the bar and it was very crowded for a Friday night. By the time Lisa and her date came in, it was standing room only in the bar and I was waiting patiently for my turn at the pool table. I had already consumed a couple beers and I was feeling pretty good about my chances once I got to the pool table. It was just my kind of night with the large crowd in the bar. A large crowd in the bar meant a large crowd watching the billiard games in the back. They had one pool table in the back of the bar and the area always gathered a crowd if someone good was playing pool. I wanted that someone to be me, so I waited for my quarters to come up. When Lisa and her date came through the door, they were greeted by some of the regulars at the bar as they made their way towards the back of the bar at the other end from where I was sitting. Lisa and I made eye contact as they came in and I could tell by her smile, it was going well. The bar was long and stretched from the front of the room to the back with bar stools all the way down and around the bar. It had to be 60-80 feet in length and there was also a small dance floor in the room. It was shoulder to shoulder as Lisa and Bill settled in to an area at the back of the bar and I could see from a distance that her date Bill was larger and older looking. At first, I thought that he looked too old to be actively in the Navy but he also looked big and was taller than most of the folks around him as he walked to the back of the bar. I watched them chatting with one another and soon I saw Lisa pointing my way as if explaining to Bill who I was. I could see them both looking at me and having a conversation, so I assumed that Lisa was telling Bill about me. Soon I saw Lisa heading my way as Bill stayed at the other end of the bar. I was in full protection mode by then and Lisa sounded excited when we greeted each other. She explained that he was a true gentleman and was very kind. She liked him because he seemed so upfront, honest and outgoing about his work. When I asked her what he did for a living she responded that he was a Commando in Navy SEALs.

This is probably where I should jump in and explain a few things about Navy SEALs and the eighties and early nineties. Back then the Navy SEALs stayed in the shadows. They led very private lives and unless you were told that someone was a Navy SEAL, you’d probably never know they existed. They were never on your local news channel, never on CNN and they led very private lives. About all I knew about Navy SEALs was from my only encounter with them during Navy boot camp and that was a rough night of fun and games as punishment for something I did. If you go to my “Sea Stories” section of the blog or do a search and find the story “The Marching Party” you’ll find out all about my encounter with the SEALs early on in my career. I had also read a couple of Richard Marcinko’s “Rogue Warrior” novels and if you ever get the chance, the “Rogue Warrior” novels are a great way to get familiar with the Navy SEALs and what they do. That’s about all I had to go by at the time, but I did know that the chance of running across a real Navy SEAL was pretty slim when out in a small bar in a small suburb of San Diego. Since SEALs in that era like to lead private lives and leave a very small footprint, I changed all the names in story out of respect for Bill. The rest of the events that happened next are all true though.

So, Lisa tells me that her date was a Navy SEAL Commando and immediately I raised the bullshit flag. I didn’t know much about the Navy SEALs but what I did know was that there was no chance that a crusty old dude standing at the other end of the bar was a Navy SEAL Commando. The term “Commando” wasn’t a term I was familiar with, and I told Lisa that her date may be a phony. I was getting a little defensive and stolen valor was a thing, even back then. I asked Lisa if she would kindly ask the gentlemen that I would like to see him and his military ID if he wouldn’t mind, so off she went. Hindsight dictates that this is where things should have been handled differently but once again, I didn’t use good ORM, and I was setting myself up for trouble. I wanted to make a point with this so-called Navy “Commando” imposter and to ask another man for their military ID at a bar with a date on a Friday night isn’t good military protocol unless you’re looking for a fight. By this time, I was getting fired up and I watched as Lisa explained to the old guy that I was interested in him and his identification at the other end of the bar. I knew that if I got up from the stool I was sitting on, I’d lose my seat, so I waited on Lisa’s return, and had some casual conversation with my neighbors at the bar.

When Lisa finally came back, she handed me an ID card and it was a military ID card for sure. I quickly looked at the back and saw an 0-5 under the rank box and I did a double take. I also noticed a Geneva code that further assured me that it was real. There was a moment of shock as I stared at the card and at that very moment Lisa said, “he says he wants to see your ID card”. That was when a cold chill shot down my spine and I knew that it was about to get real with a Commander in the Navy. I may have bit off a little more than I could chew and when I looked down at the other end of the bar Bill was gone. In another moment I felt this large body just behind me and to my left and when I turned to look, it was Bill hovering over me. He was huge and wide, well over 6 feet in height and he had this look on his face like he wasn’t playing ID card games anymore. I was still sitting on my barstool, but I felt like I was about to take a giant ass stomping from the sitting position to the ground in one fluent motion. Another cold chill ran down my spine and I stood up to face the music. I will say this, Bill’s stare was cold, his eyes were somewhat squinted and black. At times his stare was chilling, for lack of a better word. I’ve been in a few fights in my life, but I’ll say this about that moment in time, when I looked in this man’s eyes, it was like he was looking right through me. I don’t know if it was gut instinct or the Holy Spirit telling me not to screw with this guy or Jello could be on my menu for the next several months while the facial bones healed. I didn’t know where this was going but just about the time I expected the encounter to escalate into a scene, Bill broke out into a smile and stuck out his hand to shake my hand. Talk about a relief! It was like every muscle in my body relaxed and went limp. I thought for sure there was going to be a fight, but I was so relieved to see he was friendly to me. I explained that the mix-up was that he was a Commander in the Navy and not a Commando. We laughed as we shook hands, and I will say this about that moment, I’m very thankful that there were no punches thrown because Bill had huge hands that were very hard and callused. Not the kind of hand or fist you want upside your head in a fight. Bill told me that he was a Navy SEAL and had been for quite a few years. He worked down at Coronado Island and was coming to the end of his career and thinking about retirement after twenty some years of service. We talked about my job in the Navy, and he was very curious about what the aviation side of the Navy was like. He came from the Midwest as did I, so we hit it off from the start and talked about where we grew up hunting and fishing.

At the time, it didn’t really dawn on me that I was just a little E-5 turning wrenches on fighter jets while making friends with a Navy SEAL with twenty-some years in the Navy and the rank of Commander. I never really advertised it much and I kinda knew that Bill’s life was somewhat clandestine after chatting with him a bit. I didn’t really ask a lot about his operations or his past history as I figured that some of those things would probably be better left unsaid. I could tell Bill had been around and I just knew that he was one heck of a warrior from the get-go. He really wanted to hear about my adventures, which at times kept the conversation from his adventures. I think he was genuinely interested in aviation and always enjoyed conversations about our travels with the squadron, but he was somewhat vague and elusive when it came to exactly what he did.

Eventually Tina and I found a house and moved in together and Frank moved in with his new girlfriend, but we continued to shoot pool together on the coed league. Lisa and Tina were best friends, and they liked to hang out together. We had a swimming pool and jacuzzi at our house and Lisa and Bill were our guests on a few occasions to swim or sit in the jacuzzi drinking wine. Bill was between deployments to Iraq during Desert Storm when we met, and we got to spend some time together at the bar shooting pool and at the house hanging out at the pool. Bill was somewhat of an introvert and told me one time that he was most comfortable while overseas working. He said that when he was in the states there was a lot of responsibilities to take care of but when he was overseas, he could just focus on his job and no utility payments, car payments, insurance, mortgage, etc., just his job. I totally understood what he was talking about. It was the same when I was away from home on a detachment. It was a pretty weird friendship to have between a Navy SEAL officer and an Enlisted E-5 wrench turner from Miramar, but our girlfriends were best friends, so we were kind of thrown into the friendship. Bill liked hanging out with us though, and he was a lot of fun to have around at the bar. We traveled a lot during this time period so there were times that Bill was gone, or I was traveling with my squadron, but when we were both in town we would get together at the house or spend a weekend in Vegas with the girls. Unfortunately, Bill had to deploy again to Iraq, and I was transferring to Louisiana from San Diego. After I got to Louisiana, I had gotten word that Bill had returned from his deployment to Iraq and received a silver star as well as being promoted to Captain. That was quite an honor for him for sure and I wanted to congratulate him in person if I could. I was coming up for another 4-year re-enlistment and I called Bill to ask if he would swear me in for another four-year tour in the Navy. He told me that since the fast boats that the SEALs used for operations were being built at a shipyard in the New Orleans area and he could kill two birds with one stone he would be there. He said he needed to visit the shipyard and check on the boats being built for the SEALs and he would be happy to drop by the squadron and swear me in. He just asked that we kept it semi-private because he didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to himself while visiting.

When I told my Commanding Officer that a friend of mine that was a Navy Captain and a Navy SEAL would be dropping in to the squadron to swear me in, I got a pretty funny look from the CO. He wanted to make sure we gave Bill all the honors he deserved without making a big deal out of it, so we kept it to ourselves until the day arrived. I was really anxious to see Bill in his uniform with his Trident, a fresh silver star to go with a couple of bronze stars and Captains bars. I’d never seen him all dressed up before, but on my re-enlistment day in the early afternoon, he pulled up in a rental car and walked through the halls of the squadron to re-enlist me in his uniform. We set up a private room for the ceremony and my Commanding Officer as well as our Executive Officer were present to greet Bill. Bill was a Captain in rank which outranked both the CO and XO of my squadron. It was very interesting to see how the other officers acted around Bill and I’m sure they were very perplexed at how we had become friends. Bill and I explained to the officers that were present how we became friends and then Bill swore me in for another 4-year tour. It was a very proud moment in my career, and I was very thankful that Bill took time out of his schedule to come and swear me in. Bill took the time to chat with some of the officers and pilots that were in the area, and it was very cool to show Bill around the hangar and the aircraft where I worked. It was a very special day for me.

That was the last time I saw Bill, but he and Lisa went on to marry and as far as I know, they still reside in Florida somewhere, but we lost touch years ago. In the Navy friends come and go but the memories last forever. I’ve always had a profound respect for our Navy SEALs and the job that they are tasked with. They are truly our unsung heroes.

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The Outer Banks Reunion

Believe it or not, for me, not every fishing trip leads to the success of catching fish. I know, I know, that’s a shocking revelation, but I’ve learned over the years that when God sends me fishing, it’s not always the fish that makes my trip a success. Sometimes God sends me on fishing trips, but he has other things in mind, and I’ve been blessed with the wisdom to recognize this as I’ve grown older. Sometimes he sends me for fellowship or more specifically, to be a good listener that will ultimately draw me closer to Him through the needful prayers for others.

Case in point: A few years back I took my former pastor out on an early fall fishing trip. My pastor isn’t an avid fisherman, but he knows the basics of cast and retrieve so off we went with spinnerbaits and crankbaits at the ready. An hour into the trip I started catching fish on a spinnerbait while the pastor was having no luck with the crankbait, so I gave him my rod with the successful spinnerbait I was using. I showed him the correct retrieval speed and even told him exactly where to cast while I took over the crankbait duties. After going down the bank for the next 30 minutes, I started having success with the crankbait while my pastor never got a sniff on the spinnerbait. I figured that the crankbait was starting to work better than the spinnerbait, so I gave my pastor the crankbait rod and I took the spinnerbait rod back. Shortly afterwards I caught back-to-back fish on the spinnerbait while the pastor continued to struggle with the crankbait again. I was closing in on a dozen fish and decided to quit fishing for a while and just work with the pastor and his technique as well as his casting location with the spinnerbait. I honestly tried my best and bent over backwards to make his day catching fish, but it just didn’t happen and at the end of our trip I had well over a dozen fish. At the very end of our trip, he caught one tiny 6-inch fish to end the trip and it was almost like a slap in the face for him to reel in one tiny little bass to end our day. I couldn’t believe what had just happened and it was as if something biblical had happened because it was so strange and unbelievable. I’ve taken hundreds of people fishing over the years, but I couldn’t explain what had just happened, so I prayed about it and almost immediately got my answer.

“Answers to question type prayers generally come in the form of an epiphany for me and I knew right away that God didn’t send him there to catch fish with me but to fellowship”. It could have been the introduction of something to pray for or someone to pray for but the whole day I knew something was off. I could tell that the pastor was pre-occupied with thoughts and so I prayed for him and whatever was troubling him. I also prayed for his fishing skills to improve but I didn’t really count on that miracle. jk. The point is that some fishing trips aren’t about fishing at all. I’d like y’all to keep that in mind on your next failed outing. Some trips may be to demonstrate a little well needed humbleness for some, or perhaps the healing medicine of fellowship that leads prayer for others. It could be any number of reasons other than catching fish.

Our Trip

I’ve known Greg since we were in kindergarten together back in southeast Kansas and after some 44 years we were reunited when Greg and his wife moved to within an hour away from us. Greg and I had gotten together a few years back and fished together shortly after Greg moved to the area, so I knew Greg liked to fish. Greg used to go to the Outer Banks, NC on fishing trips with his brother Keith, who I also knew but Keith passed away recently, and Greg invited me to accompany him on his annual fall trip to the Outer Banks. I’d never been to the Outer Banks, but it had always intrigued me to fish there, so I signed on to go with Greg in early October. Another classmate of ours, Bill decided to join us for our 5-day trip to the Outer Banks. It was going to be myself, Greg and Bill staying at the Cape Lookout cottages on the Outer Banks for three full days of surf fishing on the eastern seashore of the island. Our cabin was within shouting distance of the beach and to access the island we had to ride the Davis Ferry over from the mainland. Once you arrived on the island it was all sand and driving was a bit unusual because the access to the beach was sand roads that parallelled the beach. The Davis Ferry was large enough to accommodate 4-5 vehicles and 4-wheel drive is a must. It was also a must to deflate the vehicle tires down to about 20-25 pounds of pressure to help with the traction from driving in the sand. Believe me, it definitely helped, especially when driving down the soft sandy beaches. Vehicles were allowed to drive on the beaches and there were even campers, rv’s and pull behinds parked along the beach that stretched a good 15-20 miles. The parallelling access road was narrow and there were pullouts in case one vehicle met another vehicle going opposite directions on the route. Here’s a picture of my view while driving the beach access road and you can see two pullouts not far ahead.

Bill, Greg and I all rode together from Georgia and arrived on Friday evening just before sunset, so we decided to offload some personal gear and fish for the remaining time before dark. We drove to the beach just outside the cabin and I learned the fishing tackle setup fairly quickly. The surf was really rolling and there were 4–5-foot breakers rolling in as we pulled the gear out of the back of the truck. Greg had a couple of friends from his former employment that were staying on the island as well and we paid them a quick visit to see if they couple spare a little fresh bait on the way to the beach. The main bait of choice for us was cut bait finger mullet that were netted earlier in the day by Greg’s friends. Here’s a couple pictures of our setup, while Greg and Bill rig gear, and my view of my big surf rod from my beach chair.

The Gear

Basically, we had 10-foot surf rods with big spinning reels loaded with heavy mono line and heavy weights as well as big circle hooks to hold the cut mullet. The heavy lead weights we used we called “Sputniks” and they were basically 4–7-ounce oval shaped weights with four wires that were about 4 inches long protruding from the weight on 4 equal sides to help hold the weight in the sand like an anchor of sorts. Below is a picture of a 4-ounce sputnik weight that we used to hold the bait in the heavy surf.

The wires were held in place by slots in the lead and with a quick jerk you could release the wires from the slots and the wires would pop loose and rotate 180 degrees from the slots to make the weight easier to retrieve. Casting was interesting as we would hold the big rod over your shoulder dragging the weight and bait in the sand behind you. As the surf went out you would walk to the water’s edge, and you would launch the rig in an over the shoulder cast using the rod tip bend as the launcher. Depending on how strong you were dictated how far you could launch the weight and bait. Just to give you an example, I caught on pretty quick and took pride in launching the rig about 30-40 yards, past the breakers. It was a challenge for me to see how far out I could get the rig, but the further the better because sometimes the wires on the Sputnik wouldn’t hold and if the rig was in the surf, it would usually get washed right back up to the beach.

We didn’t really catch anything the first night, but we didn’t fish long. It was more of a training exercise than a fish catching mission because neither Bill nor I had done this type of fishing before. We had brought plenty of food to cook and the cabin had a stove to cook on as well as me bringing a little portable Blackstone to cook on also. Bill is an excellent Cajun food cook, and we ate well the whole time. I had also brought enough crappie filets to provide a fish fry for us a couple of nights. Well also had a pork loin one night that was delicious. We had different side dishes and desserts every evening, so we ate like kings the whole time.

We fished hard for 3 full days, but we just couldn’t catch anything substantial and after talking to other fishermen in the area, it was a problem for everyone. The heavy surf, moving tides and rip currents from an Atlantic hurricane far out at sea caused the bite to all but shut down on the coastline. We tried every trick in the book but the big bites we did get turned out to be toothy sharks that would cut the line almost immediately and the target fish, like Bluefish and drum were very few and far between. I was taken in by the wildlife and the scenery in the area as the island was covered with sea oats, wax myrtle and beach grass everywhere but the beach itself. The beach was riddled with sea gulls, sand pipers and the occasional fly-by consisting of one or more pelicans. I watched out past the breakers as the pelicans would dive on fish out past the breakers time and time again. There was the constant squawking and chattering of the sea gulls here and there and they would do what gulls do, scavenging around the washed up Sargassum seaweed and I was amused by the little sand pipers as they pecked along in the surf as the waves receded in the surf. Sometimes the little sandpipers would come close to me, but they were aware of my existence and would stay about 5-10 from where I was sitting. I even saw a few Ospreys flying along the beach looking for a nice mullet dinner. Speaking of mullet, every once in a while, you could see mullet jumping out beyond the surf and I wondered if that was what the pelicans were hunting. We could also see what I thought to be small schools of bluefish surfacing in the distance but not anywhere near close enough to cast to. There was usually a distinct line of sandy churned up water in the surf that extending out into the Atlantic further than we could cast and I wondered if the churned-up water from the heavy surf kept the fish we were targeting further out to see. There were a lot of Carolina Skiff type flat bottom boats fishing out along a line where the water went from a sandy color to a blue color hundreds of yards out and further than even, I could cast.

Greg caught one or two small bluefish and some nice founder but the bluefish was too small and the flounder was out of season. Here’s a couple pictures of Bill and his flounder.

Yours truly didn’t catch a fish the whole trip and that was ok because I realized that I wasn’t there to catch fish but for other reasons. One of those reasons was to net bait for us which I thought was pretty cool. Mullet was our bait of choice and there was a lighthouse on the southern end of the island called the “Cape Lookout Lighthouse” and near the lighthouse was a courtesy dock inside the sound where a tour boat took passengers for a ride to look around inside the protected sound and a long gangway to the courtesy dock where passengers boarded the tour boat. That’s where we netted our mullet along with a lot of other fishermen. I knew how to throw a cast net, and I had a blast netting the mullet we needed from the gangway. We had to watch the water below and every once in a while, a little school of mullet would get close enough to the gangway for me to make a cast. The net was a little 6-footer and perfect for precise throwing when trying to hit a moving target of the small schools of mullet. It only took me about 7-8 throws to get 40-50 mullet that were about 6-8 inches in length, and we would keep some alive in a minnow bucket with a bubbler and the rest went on ice for cut bait. Here’s a few pictures from the bait netting excursion.

We also used fresh shrimp for bait and as a bonus, we used the leftover shrimp to add to our dinners for a couple of nights. We used smaller chunks of shrimp on smaller fishing rods to catch pinfish to use for bait but every time we used a live pinfish something big would tear off with it and ultimately break the 40lb test line. Whatever was eating the live pinfish was big and the only fish I had on, I couldn’t turn or stop, and it was either break the line or let the fish spool the reel. It was disheartening but a fun fight for a minute. The fishing wasn’t that great for our stay, but the fellowship was more than I could have imagined. We made it back home safely on our 5th day and I’m still catching up on my sleep. Here’s a few random pictures of the cabin. The first being the view from my bed when I woke up in the morning. There was usually on onshore breeze and the sound of the rolling surf coming through the window.

It was pretty awesome to hang out with two guys that I grew up with in little ole Girard, Kansas and chat about long past memories that I had forgotten all about. We told stories of our youth and talked about growing up and we also talked about the classmates that are no longer with us. We listened to music from our era growing up and even after returning home I’m still having these little mental flashbacks from my youth that were stirred up from our conversations and music of our youth while we were there. I’m not sure that I’ll return to the Outer Banks for another trip because it was pretty hard on my body and I’m still feeling the aches and pains from the trip but one thing that’s for sure though, I’ll never forget our reunion at the Outer Banks.

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Ima October Topwater Addict

It’s finally here! October has to be my favorite month of the year, and for many reasons. Soon the leaves around the lake will turn colors as the season changes and provide a backdrop of beauty for all to behold. Major league baseball has reached the playoff season and football is just starting. Usually by October my fantasy football teams are well on their way to another losing season and I’m left scratching my head on what went wrong this year. Following college football is a family tradition in the south and if you’re not a fan of the SEC, well, bless your heart. October brings a fishing pattern to the lake that is like no other and our topwater bite on Lake Lanier, with a backdrop of crimson and gold shoreline is the perfect setting. It’s a spectacular time of year and the way things are looking it should be a banner fall for topwater around the lake.

It’s been a couple weeks since my last report but not a whole lot has changed for me. I’ve been on this topwater binge for a while now, probably since the spring. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve mixed in a couple of other patterns but topwater has been my favorite for months now. This summer was one of those summers that provided me with topwater excitement nonstop. Well almost nonstop. I had to stop for my latest knee replacement. That sidelined me for a month or so, but the new knee has finally settled in and as a result, there is much less pain than before the replacement. I just finished my physical therapy and hopefully this old body holds together without another joint issue for a while, or at least until the lake turns over and topwater is minimal till next spring.

In my last report, I was all in on the Riser topwater bait and I learned a lot using it for the first time this year. It’s a very effective bait this time of year because the fish are feeding heavily on the balls of threadfin shad drifting all over the lake and especially in the front half of the creeks right now. This is the time of year that the bait starts making that trek to the creeks where they will spend their winter, making their way to the backs of the creeks where the water may be just a bit warmer. The threadfin shad are small, most in the 1-2 size and the little riser isn’t much bigger than that, plus it creates a wake which is what the bass are looking for on the surface. Bass like to track down the source of a wake, thinking it’s probably a blueback on the surface. The riser also works well when there isn’t a whole lot of wind and the clear riser really works during those times and for pressured fish.

This week the Ima ko ruled the week for the biggest fish. I probably missed about 90% of the fish that actually blew up on it, but I did connect with a few. Most of the time I had to keep the Ima moving at a pretty good pace to get the bites and not give the fish a good look at it but there were also a few times that the fish reacted to the bait when it was dead sticked. Dead sticking wasn’t exactly the pattern I was using but sometimes I would kill the bait about halfway back to the boat and wait about 10-20 seconds, especially if I had fish swimming underneath it on the retrieve and every once in a while, a fish would come up and grab it. I think it was probably the flash from the shiny chrome that would trigger the bite while dead sticking. The Ima worked best in a medium chop over brush this week but if the chop got smaller, I would put the Ima down and pick up the clear riser. It seemed like the fish preferred the riser over the Ima in lite chop and that clear bait had them baffled at times. I had two fish that were 4lbs or over today and both came from a hump this afternoon with the clear riser. It’s been a good choice for me. If it got flat and the fish were on the bottom, I’d throw the shaky head, especially on the crown of the humps or around the brush.

Another bait I used for success this week was the spinnerbait. In the mornings there wasn’t much of a solid topwater bite for me but hitting the points with some wind and chop on them was the perfect place for the 3/4-ounce SpotSticker Mini Me pictured below. That little bait was my answer to stubborn topwater fish in the morning. Below is pics my best baits this week.

I’d like to write more but that’s about all I have time for this week. It was a fun week, and the recent rains has brought the water level up to less than a foot below full pool which is about a 3-foot jump in the last 10 days. Water temps are fluctuating from the mid to upper 70’s and the corps is generating a few hours in the evenings. It won’t be long till the leaves turn colors and the topwater peaks for the fall. Here are a few of my memorable fish this week.