Baker's Branch

  You hear about tube jigs. I am a tube fisherman. I love fishing for bass out of a float tube, particularly at this time of the year when the first thrill of the day is the feel of cool water rushing up and around areas of my body I only visit in the bathtub.   Doing that at this time of the year will suck the air right out of you, and totally clear your brain of all other thoughts. I guarantee it. Once done, I start fishing, mind properly redirected.   There’s a rocky bluff right in front of my house running north and south for maybe two hundred yards that helps corral the creek water of Baker’s Branch on its run under Highway 51 to the main part of Lake Keystone that floats Pier 51 Marina. Only two hundred yards of sandstone rock rubble. There are bass living in that rubble. Not many, but at my age it’s all I need. How much rice can a China man eat?   Technically, from my front yard I can hit the lake with a rock. Well, I used to be able to do it better than...

  So far everything has been about three weeks early this year, season-wise. Spring came at the end of February this year, instead of at the end of March. We've been gathering tomatoes out here on Baker's Branch for two weeks already, instead of how we usually do about the Fourth of July as far back as I can remember.   I have friends that claim to have already gathered okra. If true, they have not offered up any in way of gifts, or proof, but I will take them at their word. Okra in August is customary for us, but this is not an ordinary year.   And so it goes. About the time you think you are old enough to be able to say that you have seen it all .... well, then you see something else. Catfishing has been that way this year.   June is the month for channel cats to spawn; mid to late June. This year they started in late May, and the flatheads, that usually hit their spawning peak in the first week of July, have probably already peaked, or come close to it. Ther...