I pull into Cossar State Park, on Enid Lake, Mississippi, and all I see are deer. The park is empty, no cars, no-one milling about. Very nice camp ground, nice secluded drive in, and tons of deer. As I drive in, I stop, take a picture of one deer about 60 yards away, and I think this is cool, wildlife abounds here. I drive 50 yards, and another deer, 30 yards from the road. I go a bit further and 3 more, just standing there, occasionally glancing up, about 15 yards from my car. Wow, I've seen plenty of deer before, I'm a deer hunter, and I live in a county in Illinois where deer hunting, at least with gun, is not allowed. So the county is over run with deer. I see them pretty much every dawn and dust when there are 10 to 20 of them in every field. But here at Cossar State Park they seemed practically tame, with not a care in the world. Here's a picture of a buck no more than four feet outside my passenger window. I just stopped, rolled down the window, and took a picture. It did not care, it just kept on eating grass. Totally cool.
Anyway, I came down here to do the Crankbait Trolling thing. I was told it was that time of the year here in Mississippi. Trolling in the heat of the Summer, and there was plenty of heat. I came down for a week, and it was pretty much in the 90's every day! Oh yay, this Northern boy is going to roast!
Billbob invited me to go to Mississippi with him to pull cranks. He was heading down from Indiana, and I was going drive over from Illinois to ride with him. Well,that was the original plan. We actually delayed the trip once and it pushed it back to where it now overlapped with my birthday. Not normally a big deal, I'm not really the birthday celebrating type. Especially when you start in on the "GEEZER" years! Or Should I say TEAM GEEZER as we affectionately call our selves on the Crappie.com message board. But my daughter had already planned a special trip home to take us out to dinner and a concert.
Yay, she was taking me to go see Tim McGraw. I'm really a Rock and Roll guy, but I've learned to enjoy all music. My wife is a country music girl, and the daughters have taken to that as well. So if this is where my daughter offered to take me, I was going to go, and I was going to enjoy it, just like a good dad should! Yes, I did have fun, but mostly cause I was able to spend some time with family.
As it turned out, I did not drive to Indiana and drive down with Billbob. Instead we drove down separately and met up at the campsite. We left our homes about the same time, but he lives further South than me and was therefore ahead of me. Since he was driving slower with a boat in tow, I thought I'd might just catch up with him somewhere on the road. We traveled the same roads down to Enid, but Billbob was about 2-3 hours ahead of me. He made a few stops along the way, one at Grizzly Jigs, and I made only one stop for gas. Well I did make it to the campground first, but only because billbob was at the local grocery store picking up some food. I never did catch up with him on the road.Billbob arrived shortly after I did.
We took our time setting up camp, and time it took! If you know billbob, he's actually does have the "kitchen sink" packed in his camper, lol! He broke out the TEAM GEEZER shirt for me, which you may have seen me post on the board.
The next morning, we went fishing. This was my first time on Enid but Billbob had fished here many time. We were pulling cranks behind four planer boards and we also had 2 lines straight behind the boat. The planer boards Billbob uses are pretty cool. He has them set up with flags and a spring mechanism so that if a fish tugs on the line, the flag is pulled down. When you see the flag bobbing up and down, you know you have a fish. And fish we got! What a lake, it was so much fun pulling in fish, sometimes two at a time.
The limit is 12 inches on this lake, so although we caught alot of fish, only a few were we able to keep. On top of the fact that Billbob does not like to keep 12.25 inch fish for fear that they will shrink by the time we get back to shore. I think that first day we only kept four fish, but that was OK by me. It was just so much fun catching so many fish, I coulda released every one, and I still would have been a "happy camper".
Later that day we had a couple surprises. Yikes stopped by with the latesthot crank baits for us to use. Thanks Yikes. Satdoc1 and Torchdropped off some “maters”. Yes after all that posting andcomplaining about not having maters, billbob finally got his maters! And the other was the arrival of Jeff White. Jeff, and his familyarrived that evening and set up camp. I could tell the fun was just beginning, this was going to be a great trip.
The next morning Jeff, Billbob and I went out fishing on Enid and we had a blast doing the same thing Billbob and I did the day before. Jeff showed me a slightly different technique of planer board management. He'll let line out on the inside planer board when he catches a fish on the outside planer board. This allows you to reel in the outsideone in, and moves the planer board that used to be on the inside, tothe outside. Neat little trick so that you don't have to reel in allyour boards if you get a fish on the far outside one. We had lots of fun, caught lots of fish on Enid, but on that Monday Billbob and I moved camp to Sardis.
Part Two, Sardis and Arkabutla coming soon.
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