The older you will get...: The Shallow Water Catfish Bite is On or I Only Saw One Cuss Fight at the Lake on a Crowded Saturday...

The details. Slip corks, punch bait fished around willows and cypress trees in four feet of water will produce a mess of catfish. Yesterday we caught the most part of 26 real fat channel cats between 1:30 and 3:00 with a nice south wind pointing the boat right up in an opening in the flooded bushes and trees they seemed to like. When the wind shifted a bit more easterly they slacked up and we fished a couple of more spots coming back here at the end of the trip to catch a few more. The wind picked up till it was hard to keep a hat on and I think the fish were still there but the roll of the waves made it hard to detect a bite.

While I was working I often had days off in the week when I fished and the lake would be empty. Now retired I occasionally find myself out on the lake with the weekend warrior crowd. Yesterday I witnessed two boats of bass fishermen exchange harsh words as one or the other perceived a territorial infringement.

I was tied up next to the brush slip corking catfish. One boat approached down the bank with two men casting to similar areas as I was fishing. The other boat with a man and two teens approached from the opposite direction but a bit off the shore. Both were fishing quietly powered by trolling motors. They passed briefly a medium distance cast apart.

To me, I've fished this area since the late 70s, they were fishing two different structures, one the bushy shoreline, the other a bit deeper drain edge. I don't know if one cast near the others boat, smarted off, perhaps used bad language but I overheard one guy began to berate the others with "hey guys, this is an eight grade girl, watch what you say and the example you set." There were a few other words exchanged and the male teen caught a bass from the water the other boat fished through. I caught a couple of catfish, which the perceived offending boat saw and as they passed close to me I said, "hey could you guys stick around, you are good luck." No response to that.

Both boats passed about as close to me as they did to each other but as a cork fisherman putting a solid 10 pounds of fillets in the boat I was invisible. No one infringed on the water I was fishing and besides I believe that most fish in the lake have heard a boat go by and unless it passes so close the hair is blown off their heads they react just about like you and I do.

Unless there was some passive aggressive cast close to the boat or a verbal insult I did not see a reason to fuss. Myself thinks there is plenty of water to fish without crowding each other.

I Have fished this area many times since the late 70s. Once while lure fishing and just letting the boat drift with the wind through this pass we caught seven different kinds of fish. There are 5 or 6 boats in the photo. There were at least 4 boats that passed me fishing the same water the guys fussed over. I often saw boats passing through this area throwing a rooster tail. I recall lots of stumps just under the water we used to float topwater baits over while fishing with my dad and sudden depth changes. I know guys use gps map chips and mark clear paths to follow and stuff like that but I'll be careful.

Smoke in the photo is a prescribed burn in the Angelina National Forest.

Here's how you find a fishing spot with a lesson courtesy of the pelicans and water turkeys. In this photo you have cypress standing in shallow water. Note the water rippled by the wind and then the line of sheltered calm water. There is also a drop off to the old Angelina River channel. The birds to the far right are probably over 40 feet of water. I'll bet your ass there is plenty of fish right there. Most of the time I find that if you look at miles of lake features that all kind of look the same it's the one little difference that can sometimes be hard to pick out that holds the fish.