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Casting on the Coosa: The boathouse and bilge pump blues

By Marty Dixon/Staff correspondent

It’s been a week of dod-ging rain and getting together a fishing report of some kind. We can start with this past weekend, when my river time was cut down to only a few hours late Sunday after-noon. My wife Texann and I had The Hurricane most of the weekend since her youn-ger sister Finley was a little under the weather.
Saturday was a nice day but ended up being a pool day for Anna. She stayed in the blow-up pool most all day, with only a few trips to the boathouse to catch a fish or two. Sunday was more of the same between the rain showers. I had to put hot water in the blow-up so Anna could swim.
I did get out on the water later in the day, to little or no avail.
On Monday I managed to boat a couple of fish in some pocket grass. I got out between storms on Tuesday afternoon and caught several small fish flipping a stick worm around some river grass. Like the majority of my angling adventures, it wasn’t anything to write home about. The storms coming in eventually drove me into the boat house.
We decided to skip the Tuesday evening fishing tournament due to the weather and fish the one on Wednesday with a few other brave souls.
Major bad decision.
The evening got off to a good start with a couple of quick frog bites but went downhill in a hurry when another series of storms rolled through. We got caught out in the storm and were forced to seek some shelter in the front of a nearby boathouse.
We could only fit the nose of the boat in it since the boathouse had the lift partially raised. we got soaked, to say the least, and we lost an hour of fishing. The bottom of my boat was filling up with so much water that I had to leave the bilge pump running.
So, we stood on the front of the boat holding to the boathouse so we at least could stay partially dry. Thank goodness for a Frogg Togg rain suit, or it could have been much worse. We hit it again as soon as the rain let up some, but unfortunately our bite dried up like water in the desert.
I did enjoy getting to hear Lynn Johnson shoot the breeze at the tournament weigh in. Lynn is a super nice guy and can tell a good story.
Tuesday night’s stormy tournament was won by Hunter and Dallas with 10.84 pounds with a Big Fish of 4.54 pounds, second went Brian Smith with 9.16 pounds and third place went Stan and Mike with 8.35 pounds.
Wednesday night’s tropi-cal storm tournament paid only one place since most everyone was smart enough to stay out of the weather. It was won by Lynn Johnson with 7.88 pounds. He also had a Big Fish of 3.88 pounds.
Tight lines and stay dry. Until next time, see you on the water.
Marty Dixon is a 1982 Sardis High School grad-uate and retired high school educator and coach. He was head coach of the Gadsden State women’s basketball team from 2015 to 2019. He and his wife Texann live in Gadsden. He can be contacted at fishn4funin02@yahoo.com and the Neely Henry Bass Fishing page on Facebook.

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