Both sides of the river sounded like a Ukrainian war zone for the first few hours of the morning. The day started off cold, but with sunny skies and no wind it turned into a a nice comfortable day. Today's deck boss was Eva Faye. Eva really doesn't care for catching big catfish. Eva wants to catch gar. For two reasons. 1. Gar fight better than catfish. 2. All her older brothers are afraid of gar. So it was gar we went in search of. All you have to do is watch for them feeding on the surface, anchor, and chunk out cut bait. As for the catfish, it turned out to be Dinky Day (because we were fishing for gar!). But doubles on catfish under 10lbs was not uncommon either. The water temps continue to fall, and the catfish bite just keeps getting better.

We did find a rarity. A sunken tree in the middle of the river where no one would expect to find one. I have driven over it or close to it for years, but at high speed it never showed up on my graph. I have never seen anyone else fish it as I drive by. I just happened to be slowly cruising the river and found it. Behind that tree was a rock pile loaded with fish. It will be my first stop the next time I go, hopefully the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

Update: I watched the latest Richard Gene video on YT. He and Rocky Drake are sitting on top of that "secret" hole.

Two pics of Eva from last Saturday.

Never seen someone go after gar before. That's awesome she wanted to go.

Love em' or hate em', Gar are pretty cool.

My oldest granddaughter. They live in Texas and usually some visit the week of July 4th, the worse time to catch catfish. So, we fish for gar. Next year she wants to go wade in the Elk River below Tims Ford and fish for rainbows.

Awesome catch!

I snagged a huge gar in the tail with a jerk bait on Smith once. It was my last one of that kind so I didnt want to lose it. A pontoon boat guy with his family could tell I hooked something big and stopped to watch. Thankfully he had a big net and pulled up beside me, netted him and got my bait loose. He asked what I wanted to do with my fish, I said its in your net its your fish. LOL