Kayak Koz

I bought a few of the 90's the other night (Bone and Munky Butt) and today I got to try them out for the first time. On my 4th cast with the Bone I landed a largemouth just over a pound. Not very big, but the lunkers have been elusive the last 4 or 5 weeks. The area we were bank fishing is massively overgrown. It's hard to find a break to cast and you have to clear 12-15 feet of thicket when you reel in. I got tired of the hooks snagging so I switched to a worm and caught a few more. I moved to a different lagoon with clear casting lines and easier retrieval and tossed the Munky Butt 90 and caught a small bass on the first cast. A thunderstorm was moving in quickly and we high tailed it out of there after a few more casts. We bike to our fishing spots and needed to outrace the storm. So overall it was a good debut for my Whopper Ploppers. Next week we're heading up to Lake Warren (Hampton SC) and renting a Jon boat and I can't wait to try them up there.

I recently accepted a job in the field of stormwater management and that's going to put me around lagoons every day and the one thing that scares me is the gator just under the water that you can't see or don't see until the last second. I'm seriously considering carrying a very big machete strapped to my back like something out of The Walking Dead. I'm accustomed to seeing gators sunning themselves on the banks or cruising in the water so they're not that big a deal if you keep a decent distance away from them. With fishing they're more of a nuisance either going for your bait or trying to grab the fish you're landing. Some will just sit there and let you know you're in their territory. But if they get aggressive with our baits or catches we just move to the next lagoon. It's easier than getting in a bad situation with one of them.

No gators bothered us today. Instead it was the fire ants all over my tackle box. They didn't get me today but my son had 4 or 5 bites on his legs. It's a tough day when you get more ant bites than fish bites.

For years I fished with a limited arsenal of Senko, jerkbait, and lipless crankbait. This year I've mixed it up a bit and had my first catches on a jig and pig and a frog. The other day I bought my first chatterbait and I'll try that out tonight.

Alligators. Definitely the alligators.

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I live about a 90 minute drive from Santee Cooper. I promised my son I'd take him there sometime this summer or fall. We'll probably camp for the weekend and rent a boat at least one of those days. We went to Lake Murray in Columbia SC a few years ago and even though that's supposed to be a great spot for largemouth and stripers between 4 of us we caught zero fish in two days. That was a bummer.

I just bought a few Whopper Ploppers (Bone and Munky Butt) today and if the weather hold out tonight I will give them a try. Dick's is having a buy one, get one 50% off sale so I went a little nuts on lures and soft baits today. As for the Plopper, Dick's only had 90's and 130's in stock so I bought 90's. I really wanted the 110's. Those 130's are HUGE. Someday I may have to try one.

I've thrown a lot of lures in my time and up until the past few years I never had much confidence in any of them. But a few years ago I discovered the Rapala Husky Jerkbait (yellow perch) and I know that if anything is biting out there today it will hit on that.

I usually scan the fishing aisle if I'm in Walmart to see if anything I need (or might need) is on sale. In fact, yesterday I picked up a Strike King Jig, Berkley Chigger Craws, and Zoom Lizards for a lot cheaper than I would have paid in Dick's or Bass Pro.

Private or not, you're still beholden to EPA regulations. Just ask some farmers about dealing with the EPA.

It's pretty sad that it's come to that nowadays.

The title is not a misspelling. It's a pun. Senkos have been our go to bait so far this year, but my 11 year old son goes through a ton of them when he's fishing a weightless Texas rig. His setup is fine, but his casting technique is a bit harsh and he gets so into his fishing he forgets to check his rigging every now and then. That's leads to a ton of Senkos going airborn on their own or lost in the deep. The other day we're fishing a lagoon that is new to us and we're getting a lot of action from juvenile largemouth bass (less than 1 lb). The lunkers have been laying low for a few weeks, so at least we're catching something. Anyway, he gets a strike on a Senko, starts to bring it in and loses the fish and once again loses the bait. So I give him his 14, 292nd lecture on re-checking his bait and not ripping every cast. He sets up another Senko and on his next cast he gets a hit, and this time he lands the catch. He goes to take out the hook and he sees both Senkos in the mouth of the fish. What are the odds that the same fish hits his line on consecutive casts? That was kind of amazing.

A few weeks ago I lost a 5-6 pound jumper when it spit a 2" swim bait. It was disheartening and memorable at the same time. I was bank fishing in the evening and there was a beautiful orange-red sunset as the backdrop. The fish was probably 60 feet away when it breached fully out of the water so all that I saw was the dark outline of the fish and the splash against the sunset. When it happened my first thought was, "Wow! This would be a really cool picture or painting." And then the fish was gone...

Here's a bigger gator from the other day that followed in a 2 pounder that I caught. The photo is looking down from up top the railroad ties on the old golf green. This gator hung out there waiting to ambush another catch and would not leave, so we went to another lagoon. BTW, I'm NOT leaning over the edge. Too scary. I held my phone over the edge hoping I would not drop it in the water. Oh - and if one of these hit my bait or catch I'd cut the line. When I fish I keep a knife in my pocket just in case that happens.

Nearby we had a golf course in a residential neighborhood shut down a few years ago and my son and I have been doing a lot of fishing there lately. We can ride our bikes along the old cart paths and go from lagoon to lagoon. I've only seen a few others fishing out there and that's been great news for us. We routinely land 2-4 lb largemouth. A neighbor caught a 7 lb lunker last month. The other day we hit a new lagoon with lots of tree cover and downed trees. It looked perfect. Lots of fish, but all we pulled out were juveniles less than a pound. But hopefully big momma is till lurking out there somewhere! We also saw a GIANT catfish patrolling the banks but couldn't entice him to hit anything. A lot of golf courses have shut down over the past 5 years or so. If you're lucky you can find one of those to fish.

Old topic, but I'm new to the forum and I live in Bluffton as well. I really wish there were some father/son freshwater fishing tournaments in this area.

One of the lagoons that we fish has a lot of wind blown thick, soupy weeds and algae that piles up that provides some good cover for bass. There are a few small breaks in it and because it's so dense it's generally a pain to fish. But we all know it's fun to toss a frog over cover and have the bass come crashing through the crud even if the hookup rate is low. So the other week I'm fishing the frog over this gunk and get a pretty good hit. I wait a second for the fish to take it downward and set the hook. It feels like a decent size and has a pretty good fight. I'm fishing over elevated railroad ties, through the gunk and then over weeds so I yell to my son to bring the net. We never reach way down to the water with only our hands from an elevated position here in SC and the attached picture shows why. Instead of a nice, big bass a small alligator hit my frog and he wasn't about to let go anytime soon. When I got him near shore he just sat there on the weed bed with the frog in his mouth and wouldn't let go. So I picked him up out of the water a bit and that just made him mad. He spent nearly 5 minutes spinning and thrashing until he finally had enough and let go. This wasn't our first encounter with a gator. Last month when I was reeling in a 4 pounder a 4-5 foot gator made a bee line for the bass as I was reeling it in. On this lagoon it was about a 5 foot drop from the elevated railroad ties to the water. As I go to bring p the fish my rod tip snaps. My son grabs the net, lays on the ground reaching down as the gator comes barrelling towards the bass. My son bopped the gator on the head with the net and scooped the fish to preserve my catch. The small gators are a nuisance and you try and fish around them. But when the big gators show up we usually move on to another lagoon. Whether you're catching them or not it's always exciting fishing here in the South Carolina Lowcountry.

I'm in my 50's and have been fishing since I was a kid but until the past year I had not fished for a while. I'm a full time, single Dad with an 11 year old son that has picked up the fishing bug so now we fish a LOT!. Where we live in Bluffton, SC we have a dozen or so lagoons in our neighborhood so we pack our gear, jump on our bikes, and pick a lagoon. Pre-spawn fishing was great down here and we were regularly pulling in 2-4 pounders. Strictly catch and release for us. Not bad for small lagoons. With the Post-spawn and warming waters things have quieted down and most hits have been juveniles with the occasional 2-3 pounder. Pumpkinseed Senkos and jig and pigs have been our go to baits, although we're starting to mix that up a bit now with the warmer waters. With the foliage in bloom it's also getting tougher to fish through the deep weeds and grasses along the banks. That might not be a big deal up north, but down here we have lots of alligators. Some very big alligators. It's not only dangerous with them laying along the shore or just under the water near shore, but also in open water. Sometimes it's a race to land your catch while a gator is bearing down on the fish you just hooked. For those reasons night fishing is not an option for us. We fish evenings until just before sundown, but definitely don't hang around after dark. Still, we enjoy our time out there and this evening we're going to try another new lagoon.