Blue Raider Bob

Cumberland River near Nashville

I should stay away from this thread because I can't catch them like the legends but my top five so far are 19.3 Hoping 2023 gets me that elusive 5 pounder! Dwight that fish in the last picture made me pull a muscle just looking at it!

If you do take A-Jay's route through Knoxville and Nashville, Me and TnRiver46 will be expecting a couple of empty seats! And stopping in Memphis and Little Rock for some Barbeque!

That's an absolute PIG!!! Congrats and keep at it! That beats by PB spot I caught a couple months back. What's the difference between an Alabama Bass and a Kentucky Bass?

Ok, you made me brag! BTW, have you never NOT smiled when catching a fish? Of course he's smiling!

The way I had it figured was I would follow Gary towing you in your canoe because no way my antique 1977 Monarch is going to keep up with A-Jay. Gary would text me A-Jay's coordinates and we would all meet to watch A-Jay catch all the hogs and expose us on video as fish-less followers!

Gotcha beat!

OMG! He ate everybody in the lake!

Make that two boats and a canoe!

My best is 4-7 Maybe I'll be able to beat that in 2023. A-Jay you inspire me!

I have several. One on my five disk workout selection. One in my stairstep CD selection, and two more in reserve just in case. PM me your address and I'll send you a new one. It will make you feel young again!

Yes! I am in the homebuilding business so I know lots of contractors and suppliers. The redi-mix company that supplied me also build homes and is one of my best customers. Still it turned out to be a very expensive outlay but she loves it and that make my life terrific! After all she has given me four kids and she won't take them back! One of the benefits of the concrete over gravel is now I can speed walk and slow jog myself. Got up to a mile without stopping before I pulled a hammy. Gonna start back again soon. Got my heart racing as fast as Alex's video of the 7 lb bass!

I'm google earthing it today when I can. Then i'll daydream about Salmon River! thanks! Now you got me singing "Sweet Baby James"!!! Love it! I play guitar for fun and JT is one of my favorites! Great job on that canoe! Its a work of art. I agree with Katie's assessment of BLISS! Extremely rewarding to get to use a labor of love doing what you love!

My 110 is unpacked and in the tacklebox! Expecting the rain to end Saturday and I'm headin' for the Big-T Sunday! I'll drift down the river and toss the MB all the way to Alabama if I have to! I'll post Monday Lord willin'!

Is that ice? That is another beautiful part of America! Thanks for sharing. It looks really cold. Where is South Sandy Creek?

This last post made me remember something and laugh outload! My sisters (all of whom have degrees with a couple of doctorates in the mix) all grew up the way I did. At a function with a crowd of people present a snake was sighted in a lawn and while most of the people present shrieked and ran, my sister Patty (who is a college professor at University of Memphis) said "Ooo, I wonder what kind it is" as she crossed the lawn in her dress shoes, shoved the snakes head in the grass, and grabbed it by the neck to examine. The crowd was in shock as I shook convulsively with proud laughter thinking " That's my sis"!

Just ordered both books. Thanks!!!!! I have six living sisters! Would be glad and humbled to have you as well! We will get together after New Years like always. I love being with my sisters because I can act like a fool and they won't notice! Don't have to pretend to be Mr. Businessman.....just brother! And they don't have to act like the Veterinarians, college professors, PHD statisticians, Medical professionals they are....just my sisters!

Oh my! Please stay hooked......Please stay hooked!!!! I can't stand too much more of this Alex! My heart is racing watching your video and !'m way too old to have a racing heart! It may race off without me! Totally loved fishing with you yesterday and if my heart slows down long enough I'll go again with you tomorrow! Thanks for the video and congrats on your EPIC day! Alex never be embarrassed! We are all fishermen...and women. We get to share our extreme joy with our brothers and sisters from other mothers! One other thing.....school girls aren't the only people allowed to get excited! School boys can get pretty giggly too! Even old ones like me!

It is 700 ' long. It runs past my house down to my barn. I bought that for my wife's Christmas present last year. She has been wanting it for the twenty five plus years we have lived there. She was a jogger and jogged around the farm on a trail I kept manicured for her. As time went on she developed osteoporosis and her toes and feet started breaking. She had to limit her exercise to walking and the trail became to dangerous with all the mole tunnels, roots, ect. We finally got the money together last fall so I could make it happen, and now she can walk her six miles on a fairly level surface. Send pictures! I need visual. My dad could see an acorn and imagine an oak tree. I just see an acorn and imagine an acorn.

Thank you so much! I have really enjoyed this forum not only as a way to learn and share current fishing ideas, but also it sparks my often dormant memories. Expressing the memories makes them all the more enjoyable and it also makes me realize that I was so incredibly blessed. I was not coddled and overprotected, nor was I neglected. I got to get caught up in brambles and scratched and hung on barbed wire fences. I got to get my feet wet and muddy without justification. I got to play baseball until it was way too dark to be safe. I got to explore the levees and surrounding swamps. I got to identify the snakes I could play with opposed to the ones to avoid long before school. My kids and grandkids never had the urge to do the things we did. They preferred a regimented, sanitary upbringing as opposed to the quest for unlocking nature's secrets that I still obsess over. A few fishing trips and a couple "critter hunting afternoons" taught us that we were different. No harm, just fact.....and perhaps a little disappointment. This brings another magical moment to mind. I was waist deep in a bar pit "barrow pit" along the river levee in extreme northwest Mississippi on day with my flyrod fishing for bluegill in the middle of a logjam. I caught a movement to my left side and turned to see a large mink running on the logs and heading my way. It had not yet seen me and I froze movement. I watched amazingly as this mink hopped from log to log continuing in my direction. As it approached I realized that I was directly in its way! Finally it reached the log beside me and was running full bore down the log in my direction. It never looked up and was about to use me as a springboard to continue its journey. I'll admit that I flinched first and just as it was preparing its jump it finally saw me and leaped in the air and into the bog. It was no more than three feet from me when this happened. There were two swamp critters with racing hearts that afternoon! I am interested in reading EVERYTHING you have written and I will be searching for "At the Loch of the Green Corrie" today. BTW, I am a reader and do not watch television. I read nightly so I will really enjoy your suggestion. I am currently reading about Operation Cobra, the sixty days that changed the world. It is the American breakout from Normandy culminating in the liberation of Paris and northern France all the way to the German border. Our mom's and dad's were some tough "critters"!

Thanks! You are very kind. There was/is so much more to tell but I'm concerned about boring the readers to tears! Forgot to mention that when we would leave the Bayou we had to hook the front of the boat to a rope and walk up the bank and tie to daddy's Chrysler. He would literally drag the boat full of gear up the slope to the farm field above. Then we would unload the boat and place boat on the trailer only to reload boat for the trip home. Often times this was done in the dark because of my reluctance to leave.....I think he had some reluctance as well. Especially as he knew then what I know now. These special summer days would not last forever. Kids grow up and find other pastimes and daddy's don't last forever either. We had a 1973 4 HP Mercury that we used. I was proud the day I could carry it up the hill all by myself. Even more so when I got to run it. Daddy would use a small wooden boat paddle to scull the boat down the bank through the trees. His depth gauge was his bamboo pole. I recently sold that engine because I found someone nearby with kids that would use it. I fixed it up where it ran terrific then I let him have it for real cheap. Children's smiles are a payment that keeps paying. I won't part with the boat though. Memories are too strong for that! There were two bait shops in Hughes, (you can google, just a few miles from Raft and Old Walnut Bend). One was on the highway next to St. Francis Diner, and sold beer, gas, groceries, ect. The other was Bobbie's and she only kept a few bamboo poles and hooks, line, sinkers, minnows, and crickets. She also had an old metal cooler that she kept Fanta orange and grape sodas. Hers was the only place daddy would stop. She also kept Dr. Pepper in the old 10-2-4 bottles. Boy it was a treat when daddy put some of those in the cooler. Only thing was daddy also put the bream in the same cooler. Those Dr. Pepper tasted kind of (different) after you had to fish one out from under a couple dozen huge bluegill!

Of all the many lakes and swamps of my youth, I miss Raft Bayou the most. Haven't been back since I moved to middle Tennessee thirty something years ago. It was our special place, (me and my dad). We would stop in Hughes Arkansas at the St. Francis diner for a cheeseburger and a Coca-Cola in the old green glass bottles, then go by Bobbie's bait shop for a couple tubes of crickets. Bobbie was a very elderly lady that had a small bait shop in Hughes tucked in behind some other businesses. The kind of place you could walk past without noticing if you weren't looking. Then we would head for the tiny town of Brickey's and turn left just before crossing the bridge over Alligator Bayou. Couple miles down that road and daddy would turn the big Chrysler to the right and parallel the St. Francis river on dirt farm road's all the way to Raft. The last 1/2 mile would be cross country so we had to have dry weather to go. Daddy would back the boat trailer to the edge of the steep bank and we would put everything in the boat, ( I still have the boat and will include picture), then we would drag the boat down the hill to the Bayou. No one else would be there so it was just me and my dad until it started getting dark. He would insist we leave while I pouted and begged to stay in spite of the fact that I would be covered in man-eating mosquito's! We would come home with a cooler full of big Bluegill with the occasional Bass, Crappie, Warmouth, cat....ect. My dad would joke sometime that he would need to "hide behind a tree" just to bait his hook, the fishing was so good! I continued to fish at Raft, taking my friends along, until life changed and I moved away. It is a one in a million! Zoom in sometime and follow the bayou all the way to its's end. You will notice a pond on the left side about half way. That's lost lake. Only way to reach it is to walk through the woods. Raft Bayou is covered with wildlife in the air, ground, and water. I'm blessed to have it's memory! The boat is a 12' aluminum that my dad bought at a tornado damage sale around 1970. It was beat to pieces and leaked all day but it got us there and back! Better to take your shoes off when you got in that boat!

Looking forward to the excitement of Jerkbait fishing but one question comes to mind......what makes it different from crankbait fishing? Seems like one and the same. Not knocking it all all but just wondering what to look forward to. Got my MG 110 in the mail and can't wait to chunk it somewhere!

Middle daughter got me a 50.00 BPS gift card that I spent on jerkbaits. Youngest daughter got me a box of Strike King cranks and Stren Line. (durn I did a good job with these two)! Son and oldest daughter got me good things to eat! Did a decent job with the last two but I could have done better! HA!

Musta been a hek'ava friend to leave that bite! Don't know if I have any of those! HA!