nice fishes...so that's what they look like! i might as well look for them in a pile of leaves with a rake. i'm fishing lake degray in south central arkansas which is on the caddo river. now i haven't fished in a long time and just started back and any other excuse will apply. degray is deep and cold down below. i'd always taken my boys swimming there. any fishing i've done the past couple of years was minimal, from the bank and was usually for bream of any size just so the kids could catch them easily. i've been using my canoe and just fishing the coves near the landings. at frst in june i may catch two or three nice bass...keepers at about 2 lbs. being new to a canoe, i basically fought it and the wind my first few times. my old garcia 5000C and lew's ss from the 70's were long long gone. i had bought a cough ahem shakespeare rod and reel cough...combo HACK tooiee..excuse me, i also bought a mitchell reel and finally i got a good one...garcia 4300 which i just got from a friend for $25. i bought spinner baits, cranks, worms, beetle spins, jigs, lucky 13's, torpedos, and rebel minnows and i have thrown it all at them, but it has slowed way down to worse than watching golf. once i brought my line in and a bass followed it and stuck his head out and said "dude...that is so plastic...and look at the hooks, uh you got any shrimp maybe?", and i really shouldn't yell things like that on the lake...sound carries further but...i started fishing the river below the dam. less water, less places to hide right? my humminbird chirps chirps and 2, 3...4 fish go by and i might get a strike from the 8 inch variety and that's it. everyone that passes or i see at the landing say nothing, no luck. the water surface is about 80-85 now and i can find fish but they just don't bite what i throw. what i have caught, official members of the catch and release program has been on chartreuse/glitter split tail grubs on a jig, spinners or cranks. the heat here is horrible. usually about 95+ and the heat index about 105-110 and it affects the bass noticeably. well that wraps up the report for the s.w. corner of the state here, i think i'll change the name from fishing to wishing.

It's not slow here, been a very good summer, even in the heat. Other than a slow April, this whole season has been good, much better than last year.