Kayak Koz

I am seriously considering giving up fishing for a while. Don't get me wrong, I have had a passion for bass fishing. But since I moved from the great fishing in the SC Lowcountry to Upstate SC the fishing here has been awful. First off, I bank fish and up here not only are there very little bank fishing spots available they are overcrowded and usually teeming with kids an adults with zero fishing etiquette. Second, I've fished for a total of about 20 hours here at a bunch of lakes and not one single bite. Not. One. Bite. It's not just me, either. I talk to plenty of bank and boat anglers around here and nobody is really catching any bass. If they are catching anything it's a few dinks. No quality and no quantity. Of all the times I've been out fishing I've only seen two crappies caught. That's it. And that includes the times I'm not fishing and just hiking or biking around the lakes. I know 20 hours doesn't seem like a lot - that's two days of fishing for some of you out there. But I've grown accustomed to fishing in the Lowcountry and picking any one of thousands of lagoons and if the fish aren't biting in one lagoon they're bound to be biting in another. In fact, the only time I caught anything since I moved here in July are when I make a trip to the Lowcountry. Heck, when I was down there last month to pick up my son's hospital records there was a lagoon right next to the hospital and I decided to make a few casts. I caught 5 in less than an hour. Maybe in the spring I'll get the urge and rent a kayak and give it another try. But quite frankly, it's just no fun anymore.

It was about 45 minutes away from where we were when I realized what happened and about 3 hours after we left the first lake. There were 7 or 8 jigs and 3 chatterbaits in the box so it wasn't too big a loss. A few years ago my son left his spinning rod at a lagoon when he got distracted by one of his friends joining us. When we realized what happened and went back it was long gone. Now I can't hold that over his head anymore!

I took my son up to Table Rock State Park (SC) today and I bank fished at Lake Oolenoy for a bit. I have a great Plano backpack that carries five boxes and one of the boxes is on an outside pouch. Unfortunately, the snaps to that pouch broke off at some point over the last year. Anyway, there was nothing biting at Oolenoy so we took a ride up to Jocasee hoping we could find a decent spot to fish from the bank at Devil's Fork State Park and see if the smallmouth bass were biting. Well, we pulled into the parking lot and I noticed my backpack was light. Sure enough, the tray that is normally in that outside pouch was gone. I was ticked off to say the least. We had left Oolenoy hours before and figured that box would have been long gone so we headed home. That outside box was my "go to" box with my favorite chatterbaits and jigs. What a dumb thing to do. At least I got to spend quality time with my son and a decent picture while we were out.

I have found that in small bodies of water like ponds and lagoons that the bait fish are more susceptible to changes in water temperature - especially cooling waters. So if the bait fish are staging in different areas that impacts bass feeding locations. Your pond may also have reached that threshold temperature where the metabolism of the bass slows down and they feed less until the temperatures warm again. Your experiences may vary, but I have found that in small bodies of water even small temperature and environmental changes can disrupt traditional fishing patterns.

I just might do that. Temperatures are supposed to be in the 60's on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Normally I'd work on Tuesday and Thursday as we are preparing our hotel to open in February. But the other day a drunk driver flew over a curb and crashed into our transformer. The result is we are without power for 1-2 weeks waiting for Duke Power to truck in the new unit, install it, then have our contractors complete the wiring.

How drastically has the water temperature changed over that same period?

Chatterbait with a small Rage Tail craw trailer. Lift and drop, not straight retrieve.

In the winter, timing is everything when it comes to bass fishing. With the cold weather their metabolism slows down so they eat less often so unless you time it just right the fishing is slow. So unless you manage to drop a bait right in front of their nose and get a reaction strike that bite window is fairly narrow this time of year. I fish HOA retention ponds all the time and I know the frustration of fishing them in the winter. And while they seem featureless on the surface they are not under the water. Try fishing near the inlet pipes and outlets first. Then, where the inlet pipes empty into the basin fish that line out towards the middle of the basin. There's a good chance the inlet flow has created even a small channel where the bass may hunker down and use as an ambush point. If its sunny out the concrete outlet risers will tend to heat up a little bit and bass may seek cover and a bit of warmth there. The good news is that with the small retention ponds you can usually cover most of the water to try and locate where the bass are holding in the winter.

I graduated around that time as well. I remember taking a computer programming course and we ran our program by using punch cards. You'd have a giant stack of cards to process and heaven forbid if you dropped them on the floor or even had one of them out of order. My first PC was an Apple II Plus with something like 28K of memory - that was HUGE back then. I remember writing a text and minimal graphics based golf game in BASIC. You would select a club type and then click a button on the controller to start a vertical bar and click it again to set the power of your swing.Then the bar would come back down and you had to click it again for your aim. Too early and you hooked and too late you sliced. Fast forward 40 years and that's essentially the same type of routine used in a lot of other golf and video games.

I had not heard of Kodi. I'll have to check it out. As for me, I'm mid 50's and not scared by technology. Heck, about 12 or 13 years ago I was in need of a new PC so I bought all of the components and built my own. Today I'm still using that same PC, although I upgraded the hard drive and added more RAM. It cost me less than half of what the top Alienware PC's cost back then (before Dell bough Alienware). I have a smart phone, an iPhone to be exact. But I'm not addicted to it. The only reason I bought an iPhone, iPad, and Mac mini was that I was developing apps for a time and Apple requires the iOS version to be compiled on a Mac and the iPhone and iPad worked better for testing than using a virtual device. I love modern technology, but I hate having to sacrifice privacy or having to jump through so many hoops to ensure privacy.

You just have to make sure you go deep in the settings to maximize your privacy. I've developed apps and I know the power of data collection so I do what I can to mitigate any issues. I'm the guy that gets dirty looks from the store cashier when I ask for their privacy policy when they ask for my email or phone number. I also complained to Sports Clips HQ when the local shop would not service me without my name and phone number. They now list people as Walk In if they refuse to give out that info.

I cut the cord a while ago and watch YouTube TV and Prime Video and I've been using the Logitech Harmony 700 for a while to control my TV, receiver, XBox One, and PS4. The Harmony is a decent remote for a while, but in a year or so buttons stop working or it takes multiple presses to get them to work. Today I got tired of that and decided to buy a new remote. So while researching I notice that the price of the Logitech Harmony Hub dropped from $99 to $59 and it can be controlled with my phone or tablet. Cool. I then looked at the Amazon Firestick and that looked neat, especially with the Alexa voice command built into the remote. But since I can use the XBox or PS4 to watch YouTube TV or Prime Video I didn't really need a Firestick but that voice command thing was kind of cool. So the next thing I know I'm looking at the Amazon Echo. OK, I'll buy that as well. But you know what? It sure would be cool to control some lights in the house with Alexa as well and I end up buying a few Philips Hue bluetooth light bulbs as well. But not the ones that allow you to change colors. I just can't see spending $49 on a light bulb - yet. It's all set up and it works well. I still have to dig deeper and do some custom "blueprints" for Alexa to carry out some commands. But overall I'm happy so far. One shortcoming is my Yamaha receiver is pre-bluetooth so I need to use the Harmony app to change the volume, but the app has swipe commands to handle that and other things. Setup was fairly easy and because I was a Harmony user there was an option to import my old commands and settings to the new hub, but it did not work that seamlessly. I had to go in and make some changes. In the future I may upgrade my receiver, but not too soon. My old one has great quality. But if I buy a bluetooth receiver I'd probably end up buying some bluetooth speakers as well. But I am eyeing a smart thermostat as my next purchase. I'm liking this smart home idea - but I certainly won't be buying a fridge with a built in tablet and camera!

In my neck of the woods I've never caught a bass on a red bait - but the catfish down here love that color!

Best cheap cheap lures are the $1.00 spinnerbaits at Wal Mart. But for under $6 there are a ton of good baits out there to choose from starting with an Original Chatterbait.

If you can get to them, retention pond bank fishing in the south is some of THE best bass fishing you will ever have. This is where Google Maps is your friend. You can usually find a ton of retention ponds that have some access points to fish from. You may not be able to cover the entire pond due to homes or golf courses, but even small areas along the bank can pay off with big bass.

After you buy gift cards behind her back make sure to Google divorce attorney's in your area. Instead, surprise her with a nice diamond necklace or bracelet before the Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales. Then leave your computer on with the Tackle Warehouse gift cards page displayed. She'll get the hint.

Should you breathe?

But how often does a bass come upon a real worm out in the middle of the lake unless it's on someone's hook? My thought is that it's the action of the bait and not the appearance that makes the bass bite. You could throw something out there in the shape of a miniaturized poodle and if it had the right action a bass would hit it.

It's probably bots or a DOS attack. I would start by checking the access logs to see what is going on. You may find a common IP or IP range that is slamming the site. A lot of times it's bots searching for a file to exploit that may or may not be on your site. The access log might also reveal specific bots you want to disallow in your robots.txt. My best guess is it's bots from the Asian continent. Most of these bad actors don't even bother going through a proxy server. Been there, done that.

I don't think I've ever had hookup problems with a 110 or 130 Whopper Plopper. Off the top of my head, the only time I remember one not getting hooked was during the post spawn when a male would grab it in the middle, carry it off, and then let go. But I got him on the third try!

Ditto on using a smartphone. You can always buy a mount for your dashboard, then simply remove the phone when you're not in the car. I don't know about the portable GPS units, but with the one in my car it will cost me $200 to update the maps. I was surprised to find my new home address does not show up in mt car's GPS. At least with Google maps or Apple maps the roads are always updated. You also stated your car is a 2018. Do you have the Apple or Android car play as a feature? That will allow you to port your phone maps to your display screen.

Count me in for braid on baitcasters.

That I don't know. The owner picked the contractor and this contractor has built many other Marriott properties. I work for a company that manages the property. From what I understand, the owner hired our management company after he had hired the contractor. One issue we have is that unemployment in our area is under 2% and with so much work available the subs really don't give a crap whether or not they do a good job because if they get fired there is always another job available.

You want to talk about bad contractors? I'm a hotel General Manager and my new Marriott was supposed to open at the end of July. As of this morning our target open date is January 15th and we're not even close to getting a CO yet. We were supposed to be breaking ground on a second Marriott property right next door in November and by early summer I was supposed to be running the second property as well. The more delays we have the more the subs are wrecking the hotel. Yesterday I found 62 new doors that need to be replaced and 14 rooms that need to be re-carpeted. Wall damage, furniture damage, and fixture damage is unbelievable. Every day we find even more issues. It feels like we'll never open.