Way to go, Ott!

First of all, I want to take a second and congratulate Ott DeFoe on his great victory at the postseason this year. Not only was he the Rookie of the Year, but he’s proved that he’s a lot more than that.

First of all, I want to take a second and congratulate Ott DeFoe on his great victory at the postseason this year. Not only was he the Rookie of the Year, but he’s proved that he’s a lot more than that.

I want everyone to know that Ott is not just a great fisherman but he’s truly a great person. I have really enjoyed getting to know him and his family this past season, and I wish him the best. There are few better ambassadors for our sport than Ott. So, way to go, bud! And I look forward to fishing against you next season.

Here at the Jones house, we have several things going on. The first is that our Labrador retriever, Grace, has a litter of pups on the way. She’s getting big quick, too. It seems like just a few weeks ago that I was putting photos on the blog of her when she was a puppy, but that was more than three years ago. That’s hard to believe.

As we prepare for the litter, I’m out numbered on the “Do we really need another dog?” discussion. The family votes were four “yes” votes to my one “no.” So, it looks like the Jones family is going to have another puppy in a few weeks. We’ll give away and sell the rest of the litter. Grace is a great hunting dog, and I’m sure these pups will be great, too. Besides, training another pup will be great fun.

Like I mentioned last week, I’ve got the ultimate dove hunt planned. A gentleman commented on the last entry that he’d like to go, but you may need to consider where we’re going before you commit to that: We’re going to Argentina.

We leave next Wednesday, and we’ll be hunting for three days down there. There should be lots of photos from that. We’re going with several other fathers and sons, so not only will it be great hunting, but it’ll be good fun and fellowship with friends.

One of the things I’m looking forward to as much as the hunting is getting away from the heat! It’s consistently been 100-plus-degrees outside for the past few days, which is really hot for this part of Texas. It’s wintertime in Argentina, of course. I’ll get to dig up a coat before I head down there. They say that the birds are plentiful enough that my shoulder may fall apart before I get back.

I also just wrapped up a trip to Falcon Lake. My friend Robert Mills and I fished the end of last week down there; it was pretty good. We did not get any double-digit fish but we did get a number of 8- and 9-pound fish. Tropical Storm Dawn was scheduled to head right across us so we only fished for a half day on Friday. Turns out, the storm dissipated and we could’ve stayed a few more days but we got 1 1/2 days in.

Notice the picture of the Fat Free Shad in my hand; it was courtesy of a 4-pounder. As I went to swing it over the side, I noticed it wasn’t hooked very well. The line was wrapped funny, and I thought that it looked like a fish that could hook you pretty easily. Of course, I tried to grab the fish as it flopped, so I had my hand hooked to the crankbait which was still hooked to the 4-pounder. I pressed the fish to my belly, called for Robert to help, then got the fish off, then the hook off the bait, then did the monofilament trick to get the hook out.

Ouch! I got that fish, but he got me pretty good, too.

The fishing was pretty darn good. But I had convinced myself that we’d need to fish deep so we only caught 50 fish the first day. On Friday, we went shallow and caught 73 in a half day. They ate a Yum Dinger in the brush as well as an XCalibur XCS squarebill. Sometimes it’s easy to outsmart yourself especially in late summer when sometimes all you need to do is go to the bank!