Kayak Koz

I'm signing a new job offer letter in the morning and will be moving to the Greenville/ Spartanburg SC area and was wondering about bank fishing. Yes, Hartwell and Keowee are in the area but I don't have (nor do I want) a boat and my car is not suitable for transporting a kayak. I was wondering if anyone knows where there are some good bass fishing ponds anywhere in the area where I can bank fish. I'll be working in Duncan, but I haven't picked a place to live yet. I'm planning on grabbing an apartment for a year before I decide to buy. I figured if there was an area with a decent amount of bass ponds I could start looking there first. Boy, I'm going to miss the fishing where I live now. There are literally thousands of lagoons to choose from and plenty of big bass.

We have to be very careful this time of year because it's alligator mating season and the alligators are moving from lagoon to lagoon and very aggressive. In fact, today I got chased off of three different lagoons by gators. Most of the time they hang out in the distance, but today each came right at me once they saw me. There's no way I'd ever chance a kayak with them, especially this time of year.

I'm not sure if there is a wrong way to fish it nor am I sure that there is a best way. What I do know is that it's a versatile bait and paired with the right trailer it produces a ton of fish. I have found is not to give up on it on any given day until you have tried various retrieve methods and at least one dark color and one light color.

There's nothing like catching your own live bait ? (Just kidding. Congrats and go have fun out there!)

"Do you southerners wade?" No.

The chatterbait is a versatile bait. I fish from the bank and I'd have to say it's my favorite bait in lagoons with diminished visibility. In clear water it's not nearly as effective. How do I fish it? The first order of business it to fish it parallel to the bank, especially if there is cover like algae or aquatic vegetation for the bass to hide and ambush prey. Many times ripping it past cover for a second will draw them out to strike. It's also effective casting straight out from the bank into deeper waters and drawing those fish in closer to the bank. And remember, you don't have to stick to straight retrieves with it. You can fish it like a traditional jig, letting it hit the bottom, sit, then either lift it or drag it for a few pops before letting it settle to the bottom again. As for colors, I use a bluegill colored chatterbait with a Berkeley Havoc trailer in the Perfection color. I also have a whit chatterbait with flecks of gray/silver that I use with a cheap Zoom paddletail trailer in white. In fact, that combo has been on fire for me for the past week. I also have a black and blue chatterbait that I fish in clearer water and I have a blue crawfish trailer I use for that one. I don't get nearly as many strikes on that as I do the two listed above. I don't night fish from the banks down here because I don't want to be gator food.

I do, but only to get out of the house. I don't expect to catch much of anything. For example, yesterday we had a heavy, cold rain and thunderstorms. Today the temperatures were 15 degrees cooler than yesterday, mostly cloudy skies and the wind was blowing 20-25 mph all afternoon. The wind whipped up waves on the larger lagoons and that kept the gators on the banks instead of in the water. Experience tells me it would be a lousy day to fish, but I went out and walked the banks for 90 minutes. At least I got some exercise. Things warm up a little tomorrow and the winds will be a little calmer, but down here it's usually the third day after a cold front moves in that the fishing gets good again.

In the winter time (relative term here in SC) a lot of the fish don't put up much of a fight and hydroplane when you reel them in.

As I mentioned before I prefer the bluegill chatterbait with a dark trailer, but the other day the Bait Monkey grabbed me and I bought a white chatterbait. I put a white Zoom paddletail on it, fished it in murky waters and caught a couple of three pounders and a one pounder. They had stopped hitting the darler chatterbait but hit white spinnerbaits so I decided to try a white chatterbait. I'm glad I did.

Beetle Spins in early spring, then spinnerbaits later in spring. Once the bass start moving and pre-spawn feeding I prefer chatterbaits.

I second the live bait. Minnows, nightcrawlers, or even find some grasshoppers and toss them out there. I bank fish ponds (we call them lagoons down here) exclusively and the one thing that I have noticed is that fishing in them is extremely sensitive to weather and environmental conditions. In my area if the weather consitions are variable the bass just lock themselves down. I live in an area near the ocean where the weather changes all of the time. We get pop up storms all summer long that cool the lagoons and in the spring we get cloudy and cool one day, warm and sunny the next, then back to cloudy and cool. What I have found is the fishing is better on the third or fourth day of consistent weather. That can make it tough, but when it happens the fishing is great.

In my area where we have algae or aquatic vegetation along the shore the bass love to use it for cover on sunny days. If the water is clear then running a Teckel Sprinker frog over or along the vegetation works for me. If they don't go for the tail action of the Sprinker I'll try a regular frog and then a small spinnerbait, but the Sprinker usually does the trick. If the water is stained then I run a chatterbait along the edge of the vegetation.

The Havoc Pit Boss in the Perfection color on a Z-Man bluegill colored chatterbait just slays them in my area. I've tried Rage Tails and different Power Baits as well with absolutely no luck.

After responding to this thread the other day I've jinxed myself. The line just stopped.... I didn't think much of it because after all, I had already lost 3 chatterbaits in the past week when the line just stopped on something hidden in the water. That was partially my fault because I had downsized to 20 pound braid for longer casts from the bank, but that line sure does snap easy when you feel the line stop and set the hook only to have it snap off on a submerged tree branch. So now my line stopped again near a submerged drop inlet about 30 feet out. The line didn't pull or run, it just came to a dead stop. So I dropped my rod tip a bit hoping to free the hook from around whatever branch the single hook caught on, then reeled down and put a little tension on the line. That's when she breached - all mouth and huge red gills flaring while spitting out my chatterbait. She was 8 pounds easy, and she was gone. The good news is that there's a pattern on that lagoon that is tried and true on sunny days and fairly calm days between 11 am and 1pm and 5pm and 7pm. The bad news is that since then it's been cloudy and windy every day and I haven't had one bite in that area since. But today is all sun, although windy and tomorrow will be sunny and calm. You can guess where I'll be the next few days - searching for my "white whale". And yes - this is the same section of the lagoon that I posted about last week.

I've had bedded bass move jigs and even had one carry off a 110 Whopper Plopper (impressive that the trebles did snag him). But for some reason most will just crush a buzzbait. Now that the spawn seems to be underway I'm debating whether or not to fish tomorrow. The pre-spawn here was OK, but not great. That was probably due to the up and down temperatures we had in March and the first part of April.

The spawn is on in some of the lagoons I fish here in SC. I was bank fishing today at the end of a point casting back towards shore with a buzzbait and landed a nice 5.5 pounder. I released her then worked my way down the bank towards where I caught her and sure enough there she was with her man doing the bass nasty. I felt bad that she "got out of bed" to feast on my buzzbait, but at least she went right back it it I fished for 3 hours today in 4 or 5 different lagoons and that was the only thing I caught. After the on and off rain this week most of the lagoons are stained and I can't see any beds, but after seeing those two go at it my guess is the spawn is picking up steam in most of the lagoons right now.

But it's going to be 77 and sunny here in SC today

Wal Mart has $1.00 spinnerbaits that catch bass. I know, I keep some in my selection of baits. Beetle Spins are inexpensive as well.

Funny how things change in just a month. Today I was fishing an "ugly lagoon" that I first tried the other day and had great success. The clarity in this lagoon is non-existent. Even when your lure is skimming the surface the water is so dirty it's hard to see the bait. And there's thick algae all around the edge of the basin. But it makes great cover for bass. Today I was fishing the bank standing in a corner so straight in front of me I could cast parallel to the shoreline or cast to me left down that shoreline. There was a ton of slop in front of me. So I cast straight ahead and my rod tip is off to the right so I can keep the bait close to shore as I reel in. When the bait gets close to me I need to move the rod tip to my left to avoid the slop and lift the bait out of the water clear of the algae. Just as I cross the rod over and begin to lift the bait out she made a stab at my chatterbait. I don't know if she actually got it in her mouth but it caught me off guard and I was a split second late going for the crossover hookset. She came out of the water and she was big, probably 6 or 7 pounds and close enough that it may have been my PB. I followed up there and all around the area, then moved down the bank but she was gone. I fished another lagoon for a while, came back, but she had not returned. I missed my chance... Until tomorrow evening - then I'll be back! Fish are scoundrels that way ?

That surprises me as well. Part of that is because I hop from lagoon to lagoon and each is unique in its clarity, structure, and even depth in a few of them. When I fish I have my backpack and 5 Plano boxes of lures. But what I cannot imagine is hitting a lagoon with only one bait, fishing it for an hour and not get a bite and be faced with the stark realization is that my only choice is to keep fishing it or go home. It's bad enough I suffer from the "just one more cast" syndrome, but I can't imagine complicating that with "why the @^%@ didn't I bring other lures!"

How many rods do you carry when bank fishing? If I have to park the car and cover a lot of ground on foot moving from lagoon to lagoon I usually just bring a 7' MH baitcaster with me because it's a good, all purpose rod. This way while wearing my backpack I can fish and move down the bank. But in my car I also have a 7'6" heavy baitcasting rod for when I'm fishing big water and need to cast far or if I throw a heavy bait (S-Waver or big Whopper Plopper). I also have a 6'6" medium spinning setup if I want to throw something light or finesse. I've tried carrying multiple rods when bank fishing, but I might cover a mile or two walking from lagoon to lagoon for me it's too much of a pain to carry them all at once. But switching from a shoulder bag to a backpack has been a godsend.

To me that's interesting, but then again I assume you have just one body of water to fish in that area. I fish in a residential community that had one lake and 293 lagoons of all shapes and sizes and I can get to most of them to fish. Some are on the golf course only and those can't be fished unless the course is closed. Others are completely surrounded by homes and you need to know someone or ask for access on their property. But that still leaves me with over 100 places to fish that I can access via car, golf cart, or bike. I might fish one lagoon for 20 minutes to an hour depending upon its size and if it's not productive I'm on to the next one. In other cases I might encounter an aggressive alligator that forces me to abandon that lagoon for the day. But aside from reptiles running me off, I wonder if I should be more patient and thoroughly fish a lagoon top, middle, bottom rather than just doing that in selective locations. The caveat here is that there are groups of lagoons interconnected via the stormwater system and in fact fish do move from lagoon to lagoon. My father lives on a very small, clear water lagoon and there are weeks where there are no bass to be found there, then all of a sudden there are a few 4 and 5 pounders. Bass have also been tagged in one lagoon and then show up in other lagoons. I think things like this influence my patience on the water.

When your bank fishing do you normally pick a spot and fish multiple lures from that location or do you tie one on and then work your way down the bank and around the basin, then change your lure and head back the way you came? For the most part I'll traverse the bank using a lure that I know has been productive in that lagoon in the past or choose a lure based upon weather conditions. My tactics might be different just because of the nature of where I fish. I might be fishing in an area that has 3 or 4 lagoons within walking distance and I'll cover a lot of ground and fish them all. Or I'm fishing a decent sized lagoon with a lot of shoreline that I can fish. There are some times when I'll stay put for a bit and fish multiple lures, but I tend to get impatient and keep moving on. To me, this is where electronics provide a big advantage to boaters. I know us bank guys have iBobber and Deeper, but casting out sonar, having to tend it, and having to fish around it are a pain. Plus, unless you buy the expensive Deeper with side scan they are fairly useless in shallow water.

It happens to all of us and it's absolutely no fun at all. On Friday evening I fished for just over an hour and caught two 5's, a 4, and two just under 3 pounds. On Sunday I fished for 5 hours and caught one two pounder. It weird, but sometimes as soon as I hit the banks I just know that it's going to be a lousy day fishing. Sometimes it's because we've had a front move in and the bass just lock themselves down when that happens. Other times everything seems just right but I get that feeling it's going to be a lousy day. But it sure beats sitting inside and watching TV.

Spend a few hours on Google Earth to find nearby lagoons and retention ponds. I guarantee you'll find bass and even big pass in those ponds. If you're fishing the larger lakes you'll want to look into fishing with live bait. Big ol' shiners. If you go fishing with a guide most will recommend using live bait. Even if you're not a fan of using live bait it might provide you with information if you've been fishing the wrong locations of the wrong bait.