#25- Mississippi and the Halfway Point!

Before heading out we caught up with Emmy Winning reporter Wild Bill Wood by phone. These calls were becoming common for us - but Will Bill wanted to do a live piece about us in New Orleans which was exciting. Our travel plan was to skirt the southern part of Mississippi and Alabama on our way to Florida, and then head back to Louisiana for our interview and shoot, and of course to catch our fish there.

We fished a few ponds along the way up, but public access was rare, and we didn't catch anything. We arrived at the home of a friend, Mary McIntire, that night and her family gave us a great dinner. Between this dinner and Thanksgiving at the McLeans, we were almost used to eating real food again.

We set out to catch the required largemouth bass the next day, and were hit with terrible weather. It was storming all day: lightning, thunder and heavy rain. We tried the state park in the area, which was on a lake, but were unsuccessful and called it a day early knowing we had a warm and dry place to stay, and tired of fishing in the downpour.

The following day was clear and sunny, and we headed back to the state park to fish the creek that drained out of the lake. We followed it down until it got too narrow, and I managed to catch a couple nice bass, but Daniel didn't manage to get one that day. We headed back to the McIntires, who were kind enough to put up with us for longer than we anticipated. That night we decided we would head towards Alabama and find a better spot along the way.

We set out the next morning for a creek we found on Fishbrain that looked to hold some good fish. On my first cast I pulled out a really nice largemouth, around two pounds. Huge for the size of that creek. Daniel headed upstream and I followed behind, catching a small pickerel but nothing else. After a little ways we came to a deep pool where several bass could be seen, and one eagerly darted for Dan's lure when he reeled it by.

This was 25th state, and therefore our halfway mark. We took a deep breath to appreciate how far we had come, but then remembered we still had all the "big" states to get to out west, and winter was coming. Time to move.

After heading back to the car, we searched Fishbrain for a spot to fish in Southern Alabama, hoping to keep our route as close to Florida as possible. We found a good looking lake in Florala, which was right on the border, and headed in that direction.