Kayak Koz

Well, that's really great. If your goal for 2019 was to catch your PB you're all set - pack your rods and tackle away and we'll see you next year ?

I love the days with longer light because it gives me the opportunity to do a lot more outdoor activities after work. Since I'm a bank fisherman here in the SC Lowcountry I can't fish the banks in the dark of night for fear of alligators.

There's nothing like a soft, stinky, Brie cheese on a warm day on the water. Just kidding. Lots of water as well as Lipton Diet Green Tea Citrus. I buy the Sargento Balanced Breaks protein packs at Sam's and those are a great grab and go snack. I have a dehydrator and because my son plays a lot of baseball and needs in game fuel I usually have a supply of beef jerky to take along as well. Making beef jerky is a lot cheaper than the ridiculous prices you pay for a small bag, plus I control the ingredients. My son likes Teriyaki jerky, but my favorite is made by marinating the beef in Texas Pete's Siracha. Occasionally I also make a dry rub jerky with Tony Cachere's or some Weber Grill spices.

I'm not a Cubs fan, but that's a great song. It's miles ahead of the NY Yankees' theme song I grew up with:

I almost always use needle nose pliers with treble hooks because it's easy to accidentally hook yourself, especially if the fish decides to thrash about while removing the hooks.

Assuming that you are fishing under at least near ideal fishing conditions I would say that the most common reason for not catching bass is not casting in the right spot. That could mean your lure isn't at the correct depth or maybe you cast 10 feet to the right of where you should have cast. Following a close second would be choosing the right lure for that moment you are fishing in that location. The other reasons have their validity for any given moment, but if you're talking about getting shut out for a length of time on the water on a particular day I'm sticking to my answer. The reason for that is simple - I've watched MLF and I see some of the best anglers in the world get shut out for a period or two while other guys are catching 40 pounds of bass. These guys carry 50x the tackle I do along with a dozen rods that allow them the optimum presentation for any bait and yet they still come up blank.

Only fished for an hour and caught nothing. A cold front had moved in early in the morning, but I just needed to get outside and get some air (didn't expect that literally). Caught a few the day before and despite the water temp being 68 the bass were lethargic. They didn't put up a fight nor did they try and shake free or clamp down on my finger when I removed them from the water. But in March the bass usually go into a pre-spawn feeding frenzy here. I can't wait...

I'm not sure why you're focusing on just the last part of my sentence. Amazon was adding 25,000 jobs in NY at an average salary of $150k. That's an ANNUAL addition of $3,750,000,000 to the local economy that could have been spent on goods, services, and housing. Even if only half of that income is spent in the area it's still nearly a $2B boost to the annual economy. Governor Cuomo stated that Amazon would have brought in $30B to the local economy. So what NY did was give up $3B of nothing to get nothing. AOC was out there saying that she saved NY $3B which is a joke because tax breaks are not realized revenues. I don't know what to say - it's not like a coal plant or nuclear waste site was being proposed here. Incetives are part of luring business. Here in SC both Boeing and BMW received substantial breaks and not only are those businesses and the local economy doing well but it also brought more companies and business travel to those areas.

I LOVE my bike! It's a Cannondale hybrid that I've had for 20+ years now. It still runs great although the operator has occasional issues. I've had great times on that bike, especially riding up and down the Maine coast on Route 1. I remember one time after a long, trek through the woods I was near home and I came out of those woods and through the bushes carrying my bike over my shoulder. I had mud splattered head to toe and a few scrapes from trees and branches along the way. My buddy happened to see me and said, "You look like a Nike commercial." I thought that was pretty funny.

I went fishing yesterday and rather than drive I was riding my bike from lagoon to lagoon and then back home. As I was getting near home I had to go down a small grass hill, up another small hill and cross from grass to a sidewalk. Well, I didn't turn sharp enough traversing the grass to the sidewalk and the wheel rode along the two inches of concrete and the next thing I know the bike dumps and my forearm crashes into the concrete. I was on my side and slowly rolled on my back and that's where the problem (or comedy depending upon your point of view) started. I was wearing my fishing backpack and along with 5 plano boxes of tackle, scale, tools, and assorted other gear I had 3 bottles of water in my backpack. That may not sound like much but when you're in your 50's and out of shape it proved challenging to try and get up. I must have been a sight for anyone watching! I finally rolled to my side and got my feet under me, but instead of taking the backpack off I tried to stand up and was just stuck there mid-squat! A woman was walking her dog nearby and then I realized she was asking me if I was alright. My reply was, "I'm OK - just an old man trying to ride a bike like a kid." I finally summoned all of my strength and managed to remove myself from the squat position, reset the handlebars on my bike and rode the rest of the way home. I've got a huge bruise on my forearm and it hurts like heck, but it's not as big as my bruised ego at being stuck on my back for a few seconds like an overturned turtle. As much as I feel young, it was a shock at how weak I have become. It's time to start getting some quality exercise!

These were mainly executive level jobs managing North American and global operations. Despite whatever grants and perks Amazon would have been given, it would have still brought in a ton of revenues across the board including income taxes, arts and entertainment, shopping, dining, and everything else that comes along with any sized business opening its doors.

I tuned in for the last 10 laps. 90 minutes later I was still waiting for the race to end. I used to go to Rockingham, Charlotte, and Darlington every year way back when. Back then there was a 10 year wait list for Bristol tickets. Still, tickets were affordable until corporations began buying blocs of tickets for employees and customers. But between drivers retiring and the France family trying gimmick after gimmick to appeal to people with shorter attention spans I stopped watching. I didn't even recognize the names of half the drivers in the field yesterday. I grew up watching modified stock car racing in New England, mostly at the Danbury Racearena as well as going to Thompson and Stafford Springs. One of the best drivers at Danbury was Don Lajoie (picture below), grandson of NASCAR driver Cory Lajoie.

There are only two things in life more addictive than bass fishing - crack and Oreos. I've never had the first one, but I do like my Oreos and my bass fishing.

The first 12 years or so are the best. Then come the early teen years ? Seriously though, congratulations. In a few months you won't remember the sleepless nights and every day you'll be amazed how this tiny human begins to figure things out.

If you're using a PC get yourself a second monitor. I have a PC with two monitors and a Mac with one monitor on my desk. For me this works well for coding and testing at the same time, but it also works well if I want to use one monitor for web or Direct TV streaming.

Today was supposed to be the day - but yesterday my son developed a fever and now he's out of school for a few days and that means I'm homebound. No fishing for me. That's too bad because temps are higher than expected in the upper 70's the past few days. Tomorrow is the last day of warmth and then temps drop 20 degrees. Looks like I'll have to wait until next week.

Weak everywhere and I don't care! I just like to fish. Fishing exclusively from the banks limits a lot of different techniques as well as areas that I can fish. So I take what I can get and I'm happy enough and land more than my fair share of 4-5 pounders throughout the year. That being said, I do have a hard time fishing slow. If I was sitting in a boat or sitting on a chair on the bank I could probably do it but I'd rather cover ground looking for fish than fishing slow. That's probably why I hate winter fishing so much.

I've had Direct TV for years but a few months ago I became fed up with their high prices. I called them and told them I was going to cancel and get PlayStation Vue streaming instead. DTV then cut my bill to $59 a month and gave me free HBO for a year. Not that I watch HBO. I caught up on Game of Thrones and may have watched a handful of movies. My options for TV are kind of limited because the most important channel in our household is the MLB Network. Even when my son was little, while most kids would get up and watch cartoons in the morning he'd be watching the MLB Network.

It was in the 70's today and it's looking good through the end of the week. I think I'll spend my Thursday and Friday lunch time at a few of my favorite hot spots. It's been s-l-o-w fishing this winter and last week's polar vortex didn't help. .

Photo from last spring of my then 12 year old son pitching at Shipyard Park in Mt. Pleasant, SC. He's grown 5 inches and put on 25 pounds of muscle since then and it will be interesting to see how hard he throws this season. He topped out at 68 MPH last season and set a goal to hit 80 MPH by the end of this year. That's a tall task. Unfortunately, this winter he was goofing off with some friends throwing a tennis ball too hard and strained his shoulder. That meant no winter hitting or throwing program and he missed tryouts for the high school JV team (he's in 7th grade). But he has a clean bill of health now and this weekend we're headed to the ballpark and next week he starts middle school ball. I won't be coaching him until the summer travel ball season starts so for a while I'll get to be a dad in the stands taking pictures.

I watched a bit of MLF this afternoon and Zack Birge tail hooked a 6 pound, 6 ounce bass that slapped at his Rat-L-Trap. Pretty cool stuff.

Temperatures in my part of SC have been in the 20's and 30's at night and mid 40's during the day. I grew up in the north and back then this would have been considered a warm winter. But after so many years down here it just feels cold. It's not too bad when it's calm, but being just a few miles from the ocean it does get windy here and then it feels a lot colder. That makes it kind of miserable when I need to be outside doing stormwater inspections. The good news is that daytime temps are supposed to be in the low 60's to low 70's for the next week. The bad news is that it will be cloudy and rainy so the waters won't do much warming up.

I've got Period 3 streaming from their website on one of my monitors right now. BTW, having multiple monitors comes in handy for stuff like this. Earlier in the day I went to the MLF website and there was no "Watch" tab on the tournament page so I guess they've been working out the kinks today. It's nice to see some big fish being landed in this format. What's up with Andy Montgomery being shut out through three periods? There are also a lot of guys with under 3 pounds. How you you do that in Florida? BTW, how many advance to the next round? The website still has the 2018 rules.

Obviously the different strains of bass make a difference as well as the forage and water conditions. And then there's where the bass falls in the food chain in that body of water. For example, when a larger alligator moves in to one of our averaged size residential lagoons it can have a noticeable negative impact on the bass fishing in that lagoon. Suddenly, even that big bass is no longer the top predator. But if that same alligator moves on to one of our smaller lakes in those same communities there is no noticeable impact. In our smaller lagoons the largest bass are usually 5-6 pounds, but in the small lake in that same community the largest bass are 10-12 pounds. While there may be other factors, the community does actively stock the larger lagoons and the small lake the biggest bass are only in the biggest body of water.

When I was 19 I was home from college for a few weeks before heading off to play in a Jr. A summer hockey league before school started up again. Just after midnight the phone started ringing and ringing and ringing and no one picked it up. I sat up to grab my bearings and get the phone and in my head I heard my brother's voice saying, "I'm sorry Shawn, I'm sorry." When I picked up the phone it was my father telling me to call our pastor and get to the hospital because my brother had been in a car accident and was in a coma.That was 35 years ago and it still gives me goose bumps. FWIW, to head off any follow up questions my brother did survive but it's not something I like to go into detail about or talk about.