Trot lining in Okatibbee Lake

I had this idea last Thursday to re-visit Okatibbee Lake, so I asked dad if he was up for a weekend of a trot lining fishing trip. His answer…yep, let’s go. I’ve been dieing to try out my new boat motor (2 stroke Yamaha 25) I bought at the last of the fishing season last year. We got a late start Saturday (no hurry our plan was to be fishing by 3:00pm) we got packed up and the boat batteries charged up by 9:30am. It's amazing how much stuff you end up carrying…my truck bed was full.

Oh yea I added a second depth finder

to the rear of my boat the night before, just so I could see how deep the water is while running the big motor. I had installed one up front last year (on the trolling motor); both worked great…my boat is a work in progress.

Okatibbee Lake is about an hour and a half away from home about 9 miles north of Meridian, MS just off Hwy. 19. We stopped off at Wal-Mart to get some food and fishing supplies and came across the tent section, the tent my dad and I had brought with us is a real monster…it’s something like a 20’ x 20’ three room tent. So dad decided to spring for a new tent to avoid the hassle of setting up the monster tent. We ended up getting a Colman 5 person dome tent

(it took us only minutes to set up compared to the hour it would have taken to set up the big one). don’t get me wrong the big tent is nice (very nice)

if you have a large group going with you…I also have a small two man tent

that I use for hiking, but it was to small for what we needed, the Colman worked out great.

After all was said and done, we got to the lake around twelve…this is where things got a little strange. We stopped at the park manager building and asked to get a primitive camp site near the water so we could pull our boat up near the tent to keep an eye on it while we were not fishing. We were told that the lake had been flooded due to lots of rain and that area around the lake was closed (due to high water) AND some one had hit the main water line (minutes before we got there) to the primitive section so there was no running water in that section. Good news, he would let us stay for free…BAD NEWS…we would have to stay at the exact same camp spot (54) that I stayed at during my last motorcycle camping weekend…you know the one, if you have been following my blog…the one where I had the BIGFOOT encounter (true story)
http://bigalscompound.blogspot.com/2009/02/bigfootat-okatibbee-lake-in-mississippi.html
we were told we would have the place to ourselves as there was only one lady and her kids in the primitive section.

We pulled over to the site and started setting up our tent. As we were greeted by our new neighbor's son…it went something like this…the son “what’s that?” me “a boat” the son “what’s that?” me “a boat motor” the son “what that?” me “a fishing pole” the son “what’s that?”…Well you get the idea…OH WAIT IT GETS BETTER!!! Then her friend shows up in a truck, as the door opens not one, not two, not three, but six chihuaha dogs jump out…Hmmmm and lets guess were they go…straight to our tent…so being the good neighbor I try to reach down a pet one of the tiny dogs…guess what happens, it start to bark, or should I say all six start to bark…here’s the best part they follow me around barking at me as there owners watch on…I got to admit drop kick did come to mind…then I would get a flash back of my two angels at home…TACO and BELL,

and I decided to spare their lives…oh and the dogs too. Ha-ha.

BY THIS POINT WE WERE NOT VERY HAPPY WITH OUR CAMP SPOT, but we decided to make the best of it and head to the bait store to get some minnows. As we pulled out with boat in tow, we passed by the camp area were the campers (RV’S) stay. So, we drove through to have a look and to our surprise spot six was open… (right on the lake)

so we rushed to the office and were able to trade spots (it cost us twenty bucks, but was worth a million)…we now had running water, power, and a very nice bath house

just down the street. As for our old spot we just drove up unstated our tent and threw it into the boat then we made the slow ride to the new camp spot six…the greatest spot ever. Ok I’m exaggerating a little. But it was a great spot.

So off to the bait store we went, we were told it was a few miles away and the store was called Reeds. After many miles of back road driving we found a store named Spiritmart

come to find out it was no long called Reeds, it had been sold years ago but everyone still called it Reeds…I guess it would help if we had known that…ha-ha.

Ok, this story isrunning kind of long, so I will try to speed things up a little, we launched the boat and set sail to set up our trot line. We had bought a pre made trot line from Wal-Mart, we ended up having to tie every hook and swivel to the string…all fifty of them…

they leave that off the packet…ha-ha. The came the string NIGHTMARE as dad was unrolling the string it became tangled and we spent the next thirty minutes getting the knots out…

just more fishing fun!!!

While we were setting out the line another boat pulled into the cove we were in and started throwing out jugs (around 25 of them) to do a little jug fishing.

http://www.whiskerkitty.com/jug-fishing-building-jugs.html

For you people out there who don’t know what jug fishing is, to make it simple, just jugs like old milk cartons with a string and hook tied to it thrown out in a cove and checked every few hours are so for monster catfish.

We tried to do a little bass fishing before dark…

with no luck I might add…the water was very, very muddy from the big rain days before. We went back to camp ate our dinner (bologna sandwiches) and drifted off to sleep…got up early Sunday morning ate breakfast (bologna sandwiches) and headed out to check our trot line, we were not expecting much due to the muddy water…and we were not too surprised that we only caught a small catfish and a big turtle.

Looked like the jug fisherman did not do any better. We took the boat for a cruse of the lake to try out the new motor…it ran like a bat out of hell…

speaking of bats as we went under a bridge

on the lake we saw hundreds of birds that had made their nest on the under side of the bridge, baby bird heads were sticking out of the nest screaming for their mom-eee’s to bring them some food.

Soon after we picked up our trot line packed up our gear, and were on our way back home. Great trip…yea I know we did not catch any fish to speak of…but this is one of those kinds of trips where the memories are more important than the fish anyway.

Besides we can always lie and talk about the big one that got away…oh yea and no BIGFOOT sightings this time, maybe next time.
Big Al