Kayak Koz

So Glenn - have you put together a blooper reel from all of your video shoots over the years? I think we'd all be interested. I ask because I had to shoot some video today for a project and I haven't done that in a while. It took may WAY too many takes to get that thing done.

Mine is plain and simple - a nickname based upon my last name.

I'm too busy with my own fishing or inner thoughts to give a crud or even notice if someone is copying me. As for crowding me, for most of the year it isn't an issue because I bank fish like a boater using a trolling motor. For the most part I focus on high percentage locations and move on. In the winter it's a little different because I have to thoroughly fan cast in smaller radial increments because although the hungry bass will chase, I'm looking for a reaction strike with the bass that are sitting idle. So if someone horns in I might give them a look, but with hundreds of lagoons at my disposal I'm more likely to just move on.

The main spawn usually happens in April. But bass can and do spawn all year, so this was just one of those one off moments.

I managed to get out for just over an hour today and landed a nice 3 pound LMB and a 5 pound LMB, both on a black/blue Chatterbait Elite with a blue Zoom Vibe Speed Craw trailer. That's been gold for bass this winter, along with a black spinnerbait. The 5 pounder was short and fat. I could swear she was carrying eggs, but with a deep hookset and it taking me a little longer than I wanted to get that hook out I set her back without checking. The lagoon I fished isn't all that big, but in the last year there have been two 9 pounders and an 11 pounder taken out of there - all catch and release. I might have to get my heavy rod out and throw a few big swim baits and see if I can get lucky this winter.

Park and Rec in Greenville Sc were electrofishing to check on the health of fish at Oak Grove Lake and a 9 pound goldfish floated to the surface. I have actually fished there once or twice and the fishing was just awful. Not a bite. I did see a few small bluegill but no one was catching anything. It's a small, highly pressured body of water. I did see some people catfishing there, but mostly it was little kids running around casting over your line or coming right next to you to fish. The other thing is that there are power lines that traverse a good part of the water. Hundreds and hundreds of hooks and lures hanging up there. https://www.newser.com/story/299786/parks-workers-find-monster-goldfish-in-lake.html

I'm just waiting for Greg Hackney to win an MLF event and start the interview off by saying, "Well, I was on Bass Resource last week and..."

Have you tried upsizing instead of downsizing? Check the seasonal articles on this site. Lots of pros upsize with swimbaits or throw A-rigs. If you’re not catching anything it can’t hurt to try.

My son and I were fishing a secluded lagoon in the woods. It was surrounded by woody vegetation and there were only two spots where you could safely fish, but both were under a tree canopy and when you cast it was like casting down a hallway. Anyway, I had previously noted a large bird nest above one of those spots but never saw any activity and assumed it was abandoned. Then one day I'm throwing a Whopper Plopper 130 and even through the trees picked up the shadow of something big that came out of that nest. The next thing I know I giant Red Tailed Hawk swoops down and picks up my Whopper Plopper and tries to fly away with it. Luckily, once the hawk felt tension on the line it dropped it. But it was an absolutely amazing sight. After it flew off I imagined my call to South Carolina DNR if the hawk got tangled or hooked. "Um, I accidentally caught a Red Tailed Hawk - on a fishing lure. Can you send someone out to help?" No way I would try and take care of that myself. It was a huge bird.

What's snow?

I do understand your concern, however we are well versed in keeping our distance from gators as well as what to do if one gets too close. If we spent our time worrying about alligators we'd never be able to fish sincetThey are in almost 100% of the lagoons around here. As for my son whacking the gator he did what he was taught to do when an aggressive gator gets too close - whack it on the snout and head area. The snout is especially sensitive area for gators and that area and the eyes are what you go after if an aggressive gator comes at you. A few years ago in this forum I posted safety tips on how to bank fish in alligator territory and provided video that let viewers hear alligator warning grunts as well as what baby gators sound like. Pro tip: if you hear a baby gator near you get out of there FAST. Mama is somewhere nearby and she will protect her young.

My biggest bass have come in March through August but that’s primarily because I don’t fish as much in the other months. I bank fish and I’m not a fan of the colder, windy, and rainy winter days we have down here. Plus, it gets dark early and by the time work ends it’s dark outside. With our abundant gator population I don’t fish at night. Granted, gators are less likely to be active in the colder weather, but they are still around. I also coach baseball and spring practice starts in January and fall practice starts in September and that takes a lot of my free time.

I'm going to disagree with much of the advice you received here. You mentioned that you have no idea what a bass bite feels like, so my advice is to ditch the soft plastics and slow baits for now and stick with action baits. First, get yourself a 1/2 oz or 3/8 oz white spinnerbait with dual willow blades. Then get yourself a black and blue 3/8 oz chatterbait. Fish them with and without trailers. For teh spinnerbait use a white paddletail trailer like the Keitech Swing Impact. For the chatterbait use a blue Zoom Vibe Speed Craw. These baits will produce even in winter months. You can straight retrieve, yo yo, lift and drop, or even drag them on the bottom. But try a straight retrieve first and get a feel for teh bass bite. You can also try this with a t-rigged worm and swim it or hop it frequently. Then step down to slower and finesse fishing where the bite can be more subtle.

The real story here is that you had time to fish on your wedding day AND that you brought fishing gear with you to the wedding venue?

Anxiety can be brutal and can be hard for those to understand who have not faced it. So my advice to you is that when fishing it might be best to try and find ways to reduce the potential for anxiety. So I would not bring a ton of rods and a ton of gear because you may cast one bait and instead of focusing you're thinking you should have thrown something else. So for this time of year and going to a new pond I would bring your favorite all purpose rod and setup and bring a ned rig, stick worm, spinnerbait, and a chatterbait with your favorite trailer. That's it. You still have a lot of options. You can fish the stick worm t-rigged or wacky rigged. You can throw a straight spinnerbait or put a big grub or paddletail trailer on it. You can fish the chatterbait straight, yo yo retrieve (great in colder months), lift and drop, or drag it along the bottom. One rod, plenty of options, but not overwhelming. One rod also makes it easier to cover a lot of ground. I prefer to fish and keep moving along the bank as if I was in a boat with a trolling motor and I occasionally "anchor" and work that one spot.

This happened about 5 years ago when my son was only 10 years old. I was fishing on a defunct golf course on what would have been an elevated green that was shored up with railroad ties down to the lagoon. That wood was rotted in places, and it was about 4 feet from the green down to the water. I had cast pretty far out into the lagoon and hooked into a bass decent enough to put up a fight. And of course, where I fish there's always an alligator or two around and the one in this lagoon is 7 or 8 feet long. I see him making a bee line for my bass, and now the race is on. Can I get this thing reeled in to the safety of my elevated position before the gator gets the bass. My son sees what is going on and yells, "I'll get the net!" But he's only 10 years old and maybe 5 feet tall so he can't reach down to net the fish. So now he lies down across the grass and the crumbling wood, reaching the net down to the water as both the bass and the gator close in. I'm afraid the wood will give way and he'll go tumbling into the water so I'm stepping on his back, hoping to keep him pinned while I'm still reeling in. As I'm getting the bass to the edge ready to pull it up the gator comes roaring in so my son decides to smack the gator in the head with the net. Dumb move on his part. So I transfer the rod to my left hand above the reel and lift the bass up while my right hand grabs the waist of my son's pants and I pull him up and out of the way of the angry gator as well. I managed to save the bass ( just under 5 pounds) and my son, but ended up busting the top of my rod in all of the ruckus. I've got plenty of other stories about gators including being stalked and being chased around the bank, and another one where my son is not paying attention to the gator "hydrofoil" speeding at him, but I think this one is my most memorable.

I don't know about you, but I'm constantly amazed at how much information is transmitted through the touch and feel of my rods and line. Granted, it comes with experience but it is amazing nonetheless. For example, I can feel when even a small blade of grass gets caught on one of my baits because I can feel the change in the way the bait moves through the water. Or I can feel the difference when the bait bounces off a branch, a log, or a rock as each sends different feedback up the line. Or then there's the fish that I catch. Once the hook is set I can usually tell what's on the other end of the line because bass, crappie, catfish, and bream or bluegill all feel and react differently. Touch involves casting as well. As a bank fisherman I can't always get as close as I want to cast to a particular area, so long casting is an important part of my fishing game. Now I'm not dropping baits into coffee cans at 110 feet, but I usually hit my marks. But I do this without thinking about casting angle, force applied, or when to thumb the reel to drop the bait 6 inches from the bank. It all just happens. And then there's bite detection, but that's a different chapter. I think that after a while most of us take this touch and feel stuff for granted. But when you really think about it, the amount of feedback we get through our lines, rods, and fingers is all just amazing.

In shallower ponds you obviously don't have the larger temperature variations that you have in the bigger and deeper lakes. You might get some bass that look to feed along a sunny bank now and then, but where I fish that's low percentage fishing. The shoreline aquatic vegetation is starting to rot and with the the bait fish have left the area. Once it decomposes some may hit the shallows in sunny weather and that may bring in a bass or two. What I have found is that in near uniform, shallow depth lagoons the bass tend to stay away from the shoreline in the winter. So while they may occasionally cruise the banks because their feeding window is so short in the winter it's not a high percentage spot to fish. Sure, I'll cover the banks briefly, but I concentrate my time out in open water looking for a reaction strike from a bass sitting in a hollow, in a channel, or near structure.

I'm back in the SC Lowcounrty and fishing my favorite places over the holiday, but the fishing has been slow. Today I went and bank fished one of my secondary lagoons. The fishing is OK there, but the biggest bass I've pulled out of there has been only 2.5 pounds. I fished there the other day and caught a dink that was just slightly larger than the jerkbait I was throwing. Anyway, first cast in that lagoon and I land a nice 3 pounder on a white/chartreuse spinnerbat with a Keitech Swing Impact trailer. A few more casts and I get a few bumps hitting the trailer, so I downsize to a beetle spin. A few casts later as I work my casting from shore to open water and I land a nice 2 pound white crappie. So I cast back and land another crappie. I found a school slowly moving from one side of the lagoon to the other and on 6 straight casts landed a crappie. They'd move a bit and I'd find them again. I gave up counting after I hot 12 and they just kept biting for an hour. They finally moved off and I tied on a bigger bait and landed a few more small bass. But landing on that school of crappie was just ridiculous. Usually landing a crappie is a disappointment when I'm bass fishing, but during the slow season it was a lot of fun.

It took me five hours to load the 26 foot Uhaul by myself yesterday and then about a four and a half hour drive. The interstates are so bad here in SC the entire trip felt like I was trapped in a washing machine on the agitate cycle. It was bone rattling brutal. Today I’m paying people to unload the truck. I am just too tired and sore. Then driving back to my old place to get my car and drive back here in the morning. The good news is I will be fishing all weekend once I am back.

I've had things stolen by unscrupulous movers and there's not much you can do about it because they play the "insurance by weight of item" game. One time when my company moved me my stuff was in their storage for about 3 weeks. It was a move from Wyoming to Louisiana so I flew and my car was part of the transport. When I got my stuff delivered, boxes had been rifled through and my autographed photo of Joe DiMaggio was missing. Years ago my girlfriend followed me in a move and the movers held her stuff hostage for more money by saying the underestimated the wight of her belongings by hundreds of pounds. If possible, I prefer to move myself although now that I'm older it's not quite as easy. Good news though. I found loose change everywhere will packing this weekend and wrapped $104 worth of coins!

When I was younger I looked forward to my birthdays. Now they are a countdown clock ?

I looked into PODS but they wanted way too much money for a 230 mile move. I could see doing it for a longer move, though. I did decide to rent the truck, deliver my goods to storage, and drive back to get my car. If I could have fit everything in the 20' truck I would have towed my car, but the math didn't work out. There's a ton of traffic on the route I take and I just don't like the risk in towing a full car trailer with a 26' truck. Since my car is rear wheel drive I can't use a car dolly. And with COVID blowing up again I decided not to fly back to get my car. I have a LOT of experience with moving. I used to be a troubleshooter GM in turning around failing hotels. So I'd move and be somewhere from 12-18 months and then move to the next destination. But most of the time my company would just send someone to pack my house or apartment and load my car while I flew to the next destination. It's going to be a very busy 2 or 3 days. The worst part is I start loading the truck on Monday - and that's my birthday. So instead of giving myself the gift of fishing for the day I gave myself the gift of packing a truck. I clearly did not think that through ?

With the death of my father last month I've decided that the best course of action is to move back to the SC Lowcountry so I can be there to help my stepmother. The timing works out because the lease on the house I am renting is up at the end of this month. But moving is such a pain and I can't afford to hire movers so I'm doing it myself. Maybe I'll hire some labor to load the truck. But I need a big 26' truck and I'm not comfortable towing my car behind it so that means load, drive, unpack, and either drive the truck back or fly back to get my car. Or I could sell my car. So many decisions I need to make in the next few days. I hate moving. I just need to remind myself there's great bass fishing where I'm going.