Today I fished Bluegrass pit and to my great surprise it was very organized. Every vehicle was parked with the trailers pointed into the grass which leaves plenty of room for others to park. I mean every single vehicle parked perpendicular to the edge of the parking lot. I was amazed. I've never seen it that organized before.

CO Mike Kellner was on duty today and was in his patrol boat for a short while. He was warning people in boats about having their life jacket in the boat at all times when out on the water. Another CO arrived later today and partrolled from the North End of BlueGrass Pit.

I didn't see too many people going over idle speed today! I was hoping that some guys would try to open it up and get a ticket. But I guess everyone out on the water was quickly aware of the increased patrols.

I caught one small bass trolling crank baits. And then all I caught after that was weeds. Of course all the good points that I know had a boat or two parked on them almost all day long.

Water surface temperature was around 74 Deg F. It was partly sunny and pretty calm.

I tried out a new method of trolling by hooking up a ski harness with a float on one end and a "Y cable with the two legs attacked to the handles on the back of my boat. The harness has a pully like device that allows it to swivel around. I added another short webbing strap with another float on it and then attacked a 5 gallon bucket to the ropes with quick connect snaps. The bucket I found and used a hole saw to drill holes into the bottom of the bucket.

I got my boat speed down to 1.2 mph and that was going with the slight breeze that we have. Going against the breeze I was able to slow down to about 1.0 mph.

Without the bucket dragging behind the boat I can only slow down to about 1.5 mph and that's going into the wind.

Crappie will hit the slower cranks where they may not touch the faster ones. So going slow when trolling is a good thing when going after big crappie in deep water.

However most all the crappie must have been in the shallow as I didn't see any big schools in the 20 and 30 ft depths.

The last time I went out I found a huge school just off a flat and they were suspended near the bottom in about 25 ft of water. I caught six crappie in a row but only when I was driving INTO the WIND. I was going around 1.5 mph that day. I lost one good crappie at the boat when the hooks pulled out of it's mouth as I tried to reel it in. They were all female crappie. I cleaned all six and every one of them were full of eggs.

I spoke to Mike for a bit and found out that the F&W priorty is for Fishermen and Hunters. This is a special use type area that there specifically for fishermen and hunters who buy fishing and hunting license. I kind of new that was how it worked but now I know for sure how the CO's interrupt the rules.

Mike said that the CO's have had a talk with the people who were there last week taking up so much of the parking lot. They won't be back. Some one, Not me, called to complain. Evidently they have a lot of complaints from other fishermen.

You need to have a special permit to have an organized event on these Fish and Wildlife Areas. These are not Public Parks. So that means the those who park in these parking lots are going to have to yield to the Fishermen and Hunters. There are many other areas where the bike riders can park. I drive the area a lot and see people parking along the side of the road half in the road and half out. I see people who drive vehicles into the grass to reach a fishing spot at the South end of Otter Pit. There used to be a sign there that read, Foot Traffic Only. But the sign keeps getting knocked down. I heard from a friend that someone they knew got a ticket for parking and driving though the grass.

I wish that they would catch the four wheelers that are doing the doughnuts in the parking lot. Going over those ruts is teeth shattering.

Perhaps we will have our fishing lake back from not on. There are plenty of fishermen using this facility these days. Going out on a weekend and especially a holiday weekend you will find it even more crowded. I bet there were 25 boats and trailers in the parking lot at Bluegrass today and then there were more at the North end where the gravel ramp is located.