Not to detract from the Corona doom and gloom but I thought I’d offer maybe a little ray of sunshine in my annual springtime PSA.

We didn’t have much of a winter and we’ve been seeing high 70’s and low 80’s here for the last couple weeks. Water temps are creeping up and the fish are starting to get more active. We’ve been out a few times and caught fish most trips, one evening last week we caught almost 30 bass. Get your rods dusted off and your reels spooled up guys, as my old Dr buddy used to tell me, “sunshine is an amazing medicine”.




Rained like a mofo for the last few days and the creek is up. We got some worms and invited some channel cats to a fish fry yesterday evening.


Have fun, stay safe, and take your kids, grandkids, or neighbor kids fishing this spring, it’s good for them and us.

Good stuff!

Looks like the Midwest... fun day!

SW Oklahoma Spotshooter. Nother month and it’ll get going really good, spring before last we caught and released 13 bass over 6 pounds out of our two bass ponds.

We also have a flood control lake we own that is amazing for big old hubcap size crappie come April or thereabouts. You can bet we’ll be dragging the boat up there pretty soon.

Of course the lake and the creek are public and literally 3 to 5 minutes from the house with a near endless supply of blues, some even over 75lbs.

It’s a good place to be for a guy who likes to fish.

You got it Kid !

We're still a little colder than you, though !

Figure the weekends, are best spent away from crowds.

Oh I’d trade you cats or crappie 2lb to your 1 for walleye! If I get my ducks in a row and get a new outboard here soon we’ll get in the walleye/Saugeye trolling in the late spring. Outstanding eating fish, one of my buddies calls them “ meat tubes”!

We had an early supper and hit the creek by 5:30 this evening. Managed to hang a couple blues using a belly off a little channel cat we cleaned last night as bait. Usual routine, keep the little ones and turn the bigger ones back to make more little ones.

It was sloppy mess and the creek was out of it’s banks when we got there but dropping pretty quick. Water went down about a foot in the 2 1/2 hours we were there.

And of course all the boy’s clothes had to get the hose one the porch after we got done cleaning fish. He even filled one rubber boot with that chocolate pudding mud. Good times for a 4 year old.

Great pictures, all! A nice change of pace from the current “normal”.

Really good! Thanks.

I like fishing pictures . . .

I LOVE fishing pictures when the family is fishing!!!!

That’s a nice looking mudhole!

I got lots of time off apparently. Need to take the boys out and hit a pond or two myself.

Stay healthy!

Awesome thread, Kid. Nice pics.

Jason

Thumbs up emoji here

Geno

Nothing like an outing on the water (or the ice) and a feed of fresh fish to put everything back in the right perspective. And sharing with the kids makes it even better.👍

Dang, I like everything about this thread!
Fishing with youngun's is some great times.

Bewty Mate !!

Love the boy, being a boy !!

Yes, thank you so much!

I'll pile on, great folks.

Awesome!

Great thread! Been fishing a bit myself for Crappie before the rains and catfish after the lake went up, did well on both. Kept the Grandkids busy and mostly off their phones.

I'd say you have "Social Distancing" down to a science.

Catch some, may be needing them to eat before long.

The walleye are running down in DePere.I am getting the boat ready to go.No better eating fish than Eyes cept Jumbo Perch. Looks like you guys are having a blast with your bass and big cats.Congrats on making fishing a family affair.Huntz

I'd add slab crappie to that fresh water list.

Salt water, dats a whole nudder ting !

Went to grocery store this morning!

That’s awesome. Speckled trout? Never seen one in the flesh, what’s the meat like? Salmon or more like a flaky white flesh? I need to fish the Atlantic one of these days.

Great pics guys. You have the right idea. Non stop rain here. Tackle tray clean and organized planning to hit the river tomorrow morning but don't know if the rain will stop and give me the chance. Fingers crossed.

Love seeing these pics of your smiling little fisherman!

Flaky white fish bust not overly firm yet not Mushy either. And Yes they are speckled trout.

Came home after work and ate two small catfish for supper before we loaded up to hit the creek again. Got into the blues again, not a ton and no monsters but I just finished skinning a 5 gallon bucket full of 2-5lbers, apocalypse food .

Old dad even got to catch one, but just one .

This little guy had ambition. Eight little shad and this perch that was wider than his mouth, no idea how he choked it down.

World’s falling apart but I’m thankful it’s business as usual for us.

Nice to see people out enjoying normal lives

Big Time!

Interesting. Is that what you call them in OK? We call them sunfish, bluegill or in a broader term, panfish.

Yeah I’ve been chastised by guys from up north on here before over that. Down here, at least in my little corner of Oklahoma, bluegill, pumpkinseeds, green eared sunfish, warmouths, all of those and probably a couple more I’m forgetting are called just “Perch”. Kind of a catch all term for sunfish in this neck of the woods. I had no idea it wasn’t like that everywhere until I was in my 20s.

These?

Good eats there.

Tell the kid way to go!

Congrats.

Good looking mess of crappie 10! Another couple weeks and we’ll get into them here. As for now, I just got back from hunting arrowheads with my uncle and cousin, me and the boy are about to catch some bait and get back after the blues until sundown.

Gotcha! I guess it doesn't really matter what they're called when they taste as good as they do!

Great pics, that’s what it’s all about. thanks for the break!

We call that a bream. Good to see some folks out fishing already. I’ve got to get caught up on things around the house before going fishing or turkey hunting.

If you call Bluegills, Sunfish and Crappies, all Perch.

Well then what do you call a real perch?

Ha! My lawn is usually shin deep and my house and shop are an ongoing project. But we always catch lots of fish . One of my shortcomings I suppose but as long as my bills are paid I’ve been known to shirk my duties to hit the fishing hole.

Easy, them weird striped fish they have up at the in-laws place in SD . I don’t think we have any yellow perch within a couple hundred miles of here though I have caught a few while visiting in SD and once at a lake in CO where I had no earthly idea what they were, I was just certain they weren’t the trout I was fishing for. Edit: and crappie are just crappie around here, some places I’ve been they’re white perch but not around these parts.

Yeah, these;

Beautiful day here so we loaded up the skiff and headed to our flood control pond. We don’t get up there nearly as often as we should but always make it a point to go when the crappie are getting ready to spawn. Pond is about 8 acres and loaded with crappie, some up to nearly 3 pounds.

It took us a while to find them but about 7:15 we got into them and it was game on. Fishing double maribou jigs, one white and one black and yellow jigged vertical around timber and hydrilla patches. About an even split on which color we caught them on. Ended up catching about 25 or so and all but 3 were between 10-14”, good slabs. I kept the eggs, I love them fried with the rest of the fish. Ended up with a pretty good mess of fish. When I was cleaning them several of the bigger females had whole perch about 3” long in their bellies, I’ve never found anything bigger than minnows in crappie so found that interesting.

I’ll hang some pics tomorrow since Postimage seems to be down at the moment.

Here we go.


Basket full of fatties.

Coldern crap here today, had snow flurries yesterday and highs in the mid 40’s today with a north wind. But me and my faithful sidekick donned out coveralls and loaded up the boat anyway.

Caught a pretty good mess of slab crappie, most of them jigged up around structure.
Big guy had to use his mom’s 9 1/2 foot jigging rod since she wasn’t there and he always wants to use a grownup pole. He made out alright.
Blue was the color this afternoon, we caught crappie, bass, about as big a bullhead as you’ll find around here, and a 4lb channel cat on 1” blue shad jigs with 1/16th oz sickle hook jig heads. Those sickles are awesome on crappie BTW, bigger gap assures that you hook them all the way through the mouth more often and keeps the ones that pull off as you lift them into the boat to a minimum.

Bullhead.

And the channel as he was about to meet his maker.
Cool thing is we were out there for 6 hours and never once did the virus enter my mind. Get out on the water and take a load off guys, it’s good for you.

Kid, cool stuff.. Really enjoy your posts.. Keep on!!

Man I'd like to catch specks again. And crappie. Its been a LONG time. We put crappie in a back tank but have never caught a single one out of the tank.

That's a great pic!!

We got after them again today, weather was much improved thankfully. Didn’t catch a whole bunch, just 8, but it helps when they look like this.
My partner is a decent photographer, for a 4 year old.
For scale that’s a size 13 Muck

Nice slab!

And yes most if not all of Oklahoma refers to sunfish as “perch”

Made me smile wide.

Thanks for this post.

I enjoyed this thread as well. Puts a smile on my face. Here's a pic from a few days ago fishing the stripers that are just beginning to run up the Sacramento. The big ones are just starting to come up and the state closed the friggen boat ramp.

Nice fishes and great kid. Thanks for sharin'.

great pics, we'll be going offshore wens or thurs.

We beat up on the crappie again yesterday evening for a couple hours. In the last 4 days we’ve boated 8 between 16 and 16.5 inches, big old slabs! We’d be back after them tonight since they be weather is about to go south on us again but I have some spraying I have to get done.
Momma went yesterday and outfished us both!
Big boy was touting the deadly Beetlespin, I think he just likes to say Beetlespin but it did work.
And a 16” and 16 1/4” on the filet board.

Still getting after the crappie, haven’t had a good year for them since we moved back and we’re making hay while the suns shining.

Got my mom and dad to load up and go with us Thursday evening, my dad’s oldest brother brought his boat and my Grandad who turned 88 this past week. We caught a pretty good basket full between the two boats.
My passengers.

Got the new motor hung Friday and me and my sidekick went to try it out yesterday. Did okay, not a ton of fish but big crappie. Also caught 3 bass over 3lb on crappie jigs, they got released to go do their thing. Motor runs like a top, going to take some getting used to since the twist throttle is backwards to the old motor but I think I’ll manage.

The best two from Saturday, that’s a 10” bladed Rapala 12v fillet knife, indispensable tool this time of year. I’d never clean another scale fish if I had to use a manual knife.

What!!!!! Gasp!!! I can’t believe how irresponsible you are. Endangering people, their are people on the front lines battling this pandemic,,,,,, and, I’m so damn beside myself,,, but here you are being irresponsible, while,, I’m trying not to cry, while we have people dying....

Ok I’m messing with you, good on you getting out their with the family, enjoying life and fresh air. Break up is happening and salmon season will be here.. need to pull last yrs stuff out and can it. Wife likes it smoked then canned..

We just took our masks off for the pic .

Is there going to be a king season this year? I miss wrassling those big bastards. Silvers in the salt were always good too. I predict that 4 years from now the salmon returns will be good, due to less lesser 48ers coming to rape and pillage due to the COVID. Good luck.

Well if they shut down, comm season those copper river kings will be hitting the river. Will see on Kenai as well,,

Very Nice pics guys! Kid very nice family you have! Nice that they like to fish! used to fish with my Dad all the time when I was a kid Too! wish we had that kind of fishing around here!

Drag this one back to the top. The fish have never stopped biting, we’ve just been busy catching them. I’ve cleaned a couple hundred crappie over the past couple weeks, getting a pretty decent stockpile for the coming year of fish frys.

We shifted gears to catfish this weekend since we couldn’t get coordinated enough to make the 60 mile round trip to our crappie pond. The lake where we do %90 of our catfishing is only a couple miles from home so we can go quick and easy.

Last night we caught a bucket of perch and hit the water about dark as it was starting to cool down. Had a surprisingly good bite considering the wind laid to almost nothing as the sun set. Caught a bunch of little guys but my partner was having fun.
Broke my own rules today and put fishing off to do yard work, YUK. But we got done in time to catch a few perch and head for the lake. Stout south wind had them biting out on the flat and we didn’t have to wait long for some action.

But the real prize was when my little fella reeled in this. An albino blue cat. I have never seen another one in the flesh and thought it was pretty cool. We catch silvercats all the time which are pale colored blues. This guy had blue eyes and transparent skin so you could see his muscles and blood vessels. Aside from that he was a healthy and strong 2lb blue. We took his picture and turned him back. About 3 minutes later we realized we should have put him in a tank and donated him to the aquarium that my boy loves to visit that’s right south of us, oh well.

UBER !

And the reason I fish...I just can't get enough of smoked fish,especially Stealhead and Brookies....

Boy that kid sure loves to fish!! Kudo's Dad

Super nice Albino Cat, never heard of or saw anything like that before.

Winds been blowing like a hurricane all week so we haven’t been out in the boat crappie fishing. It’s probably about over for the spring around here anyway.
We got on the cats yesterday evening and had a good run. Shad are finally on the bank, great big 8” gizzards, the best catfish bait in these parts.
Big guy is a quick study, he’ll be actually catching bait in that jet before too long.

He caught a big ol drum, gasper to the folks south and east of us. He was excited about it and we got the stones for momma since she likes them.
Caught a whole bucketful of these little 1 to 3 pound blues. Guess who was up until 1am skinning cats.
And then, all at once we had drag screaming and a rod doubled over in the holder. Old Dad finally got to catch one as my sidekick was busy gnawing on a slice of cold pizza. He’s a pretty good helper but his photography skills could use a little work. Oh well, we snapped a few pics and sent her back unharmed to do her duty and spawn next month.

Pretty good way to burn a warm spring night. Fish fry tomorrow.

Great Pics Kid! glad you and your Boy are into the Fish, how my Dad and I were! did go out on my small lake yesterday in Kayaks, no fish on beds here yet, only saw one bass! something has been going on in the lake every year for the last 3 years less & less Fish! was sunny High 66 and 6 mhp wind best day of the year so far!

Thanks for the memories, my kids grew up offshore fishing with me. My son is fishing 40 miles offshore of Apalachicola Florida, he said to come on down dad the kingfish are biting and it's going to be calm for a few days.

I know where I’d be headed if I were in your shoes! My dad started pulling me behind him with us both in float tubes when I was no bigger than my son. I’ve been eat up with fishing since I could walk. Dad doesn’t go much anymore but I just have never got over it. It’s a great way to spend time with family, especially kids.

Good stuff. You guys are killing me.

That really brought a smile to face. He’ll remember that for the rest of his life. The bass was almost as big as him.

We got a few, some 'gills pushing a pound.

Awesome!

SWEET!! I spy a crappie in the mix...

My girlfriend loves to get out and fish...

Yellow perch are spawning around here. Got about 50 pounds this morning a few were a pound or better.

April is about the only time I go to the beach anymore. I guess it'll be May this year...

What kind of fish are those BamaRick?

We’re going to head back down to the point on the lake here after while and see if we can catch a few more catfish this evening and night.

.
Good luck tonight! Those are pompano. They migrate thru every spring. Awesome food fish and a blast to catch in the surf.

Been back out after them this weekend. Catfish bite was slow Friday night, no shad on the bank and the wind had turned out of the north with a little cool front that moved through. We managed to net a small drum and cut him up in lieu of shad.
Boy caught his first flathead, perfect eating size and they have a ton of meat in comparison to a blue of the same weight.
Another bite and takedown.
And he reeled in a Saugeye or all things. Two bites, two of the best eating fish in our neck of the woods.
The wind laid down the less than 10mph for Saturday so I got the boat ready and we drug plugs around all morning and evening on the humps and points in search of saugeye.
Fish on!
Managed to boat 12 yesterday with 5 being keepers over the 14” minimum.
My deckhand thinks he’s ready to graduate to Skipper. He did pretty good at trolling in a reasonably straight line. I let him make two half mile passes and he only got us in the sticks once so I guess he’s coming along.

That little guy is something else. You got a real good un there...

You got that boy hooked, for sure!

I hope he never loses the thrill of catching a good fish!

Fat chance of that happening!

When I was less than 2 I sat on a rock with Snoopy pole in hand and trout fished for 8 hours without a bite or a break as my parents tell the story. My dad and mom has me fishing from before I could walk and I’ve just never lost the passion. I about have to drag Mom and Dad our to get them to go for whatever reason. I hope that never happens to me or him, we’re having a ball in the meantime.

Kid, very nice!!

Love the "redneck" rod holders!

Had to do a little improvising. I have a set of holders to go into the oar locks but didn’t have the right bolts, going to get some out of the bolt bin at work today and we’ll be styling!

Your son reminds me, of me !

Yep good on dad for taking him out all the time too. Wish we had catfish over here I could get into that.

Great post!!

Great pics, Kid. Thanks for sharing.

That boy is hooked! lol.

We’ve been beating up on the Saugeye the last couple weeks. They are the best eating fish in this part of the world bar none, I don’t care what anyone says about perch, crappie, bass, catfish or anything else around here saugeye/walleye are the winner.

They’re kinda a rare treat for most folks around here as they’re rarely caught from the bank and you have to know the waters to successfully troll for them. I have a couple older fellows who have taken me under their tutelage since I have a reliable boat and motor and are showing us the ropes. Makes it nice to have some guidance.

We got the all around title yesterday evening with 1 each Walleye, Saugeye, sandbass, crappie, and a blue cat all caught on plugs while trolling.

Postimage is down so pics to follow

Even got my dad to come ride with us last night.

Great pictures -

Out of all things that I remember when I was a kid, I remember the times I was fishing with dad.

Brings a big smile and a lot of memories back...

One hell of a thread!

Well we’ve been after them again, a few breaks in there for wheat harvest and helping my dad built an addition onto his barn but we’ve managed to slip out a time or two.

Still getting some Saugeye, not in great numbers but big enough fish to make the slot for keeping.

I will say that little Suzuki was one of the better investments I’ve made of late. No more pulling and cussing, no more mixing gas or looking for my 2stroke oil, just pull the rope and fish for hours. It’s quiet as a church mouse at trolling speed too.

Catching a few catfish but they should be on the beds spawning and not doing much biting here any time. We haven’t caught any big ones lately but after the spawn those big females will be hungry.

o

Helluva mayfly hatch.

We caught this guy at the perch pond while we were catching bait one evening. Catch and release frogging.

Went to the lake last night with a friend and his weenie dog shad were on the bank and we managed a few blues. Everything went back to fight another day but we had a fun evening.