Snuck out of town Thursday afternoon for a lazy trip to the lake. First trip in couple months devoted to just being lazy and fishing a little. After getting settled and the boat gassed and launched we ended up catching a little bait after I remembered how to throw the net. Got the anchor down at 7 sharp out on the east edge of Tabletop and dang nearly lost PV's rod to a "submarine" as soon as the bait hit the bottom. That fish took her rod all the way to the butt with the first three guides under the boat!! She got him turned and headed back up and the hook pulled free... but we put 20 fish in the boat in 65 minutes and only lost one other bait. Most efficient limit we've ever caught!! All good box fish with 3 barely over 20's in the cooler.
Close to midnite by the time I got to bed, so we slept in and fished the 2nd shift again Friday nite. Bait was a little easier to find...after I ripped a 4' tear in my brand new net on a cleat and put a bandaid on it "real quick" ...that's a real kneeslapper with my fumble fingers trying to tie knots in the clear mesh for 2 hours. Got back on the anchor close to the same spot at 4ish until a little after 7 and caught 35+ with a bunch of "guide fish" and dinks and I released a 27" sow after a 10 minute fight, who swam away clean after being careful not to handle her.... the scale said 8+ but she felt way heavier than the Rapala scale said...went down to 14 on the first bounce...dunno but she was biggest fish I've caught in the last couple years. And of course the camera was in the truck exactly where I left it!! LOL!!
Both days were almost 100% males for some strange reason.
Same story about sleeping in late on Saturday morning after the Pottsboro High School party crowd kept us up until after 2am waiting for the Sheriff to show up... with their 9 car loads of people and drunken soiree down on the beach in front of the house. One of these days... there really will be a surprise in store according to the Deputy's I talked to.
Threw topwaters on the main lake walls east of Little Mineral and in around my favorite "magic" rock Saturday nite until 9ish and nobody was home except a couple brave little bitty blacks...not the shad, not the fish ...nor even any boats to speak of... not even any bait drowner's out on Table Top. We started to go slab the "spot" but would rather have caught fish on a 'Bug.
Best part of the weekend was watching the frustration of a blue Century 30'er pulling a pair of downriggers round and round... sometimes within casting range of me as we caught and kept double limit Friday nite...and the 35' sailboater staring the entire time I fought the big girl after he cut within 100'of me to see what was going on.
Sunday morning was WINDY! so we called it a weekend and loaded the boat and split.

Gotta question on something I've never seen before... the 22" sow we caught Thursday nite, and kept only because she was bleeding badly...her full sized egg sacks had turned olive drab green ... were not mushy but were normal firm to the touch and had no bad odor either ...but not egg like "gritty" in consistency either! What is that all about??? She fed aggressively, fought with strength, and looked healthy inside and out. The only other female we kept was a 17-18" fish with a smallish fingertip size egg sack that was a normal yellow/gold in color. All the other fish I cleaned were males or totally empty of any sign of gender. My neighbor sez the green eggs will "calcify" over time but I've never noticed anything like this in all the fish I've cleaned over the years. No other problems evident with any of the fish. Just curious about this one.
Ron

Hey Ron.. Sounds like a pretty good weekend for Ya !!! I too have seen a couple with those green eggs.. earlier in the season i had some with purple eggs and was told those were ripe and ready. but dont know about the greennies

For those of us sushi people, we just call the green stuff Loblolly. Eat it on crackers just like you do lobster stomachs.

No thanks Ax...I'll stick with the black stuff from Russia thank you very much!!! I can suck the heads of mudbugs in Louisiana but I'll pass on the green Striper eggs for now. Took me years to get my head around snails ... UHHHGGGG!
Ron

ha ha ha. Coyote, you gotta expand your horizons!!

A little wasabi makes anything edible!

Loblolly is a pine tree..........tamolly(sp?) is lobster innards. You are a true gourmet huh! You eat wild hickory nuts too? :p :p

Ha ha. You can eat hickory nuts? I'll try most anything.

Loblolly is what I call lobster stomachs. Tamolly is mexican food wrapped in corn. Gives me indigestion.