Kayak Koz

Are you still satisfied with the Sniper Marine mount? I’m thinking of replacing my Fishing Specialties mount,

The first thing that I suggest is finding a kayak shop that offers demo days and try a handful of options. Second, don’t cheap out and plan ahead. Sure, you can fish out of a paddle kayak. But unless you’re anchoring you are going to spend 50% of your time on the water just positioning the watercraft. If you do buy a paddle kayak, make sure that it later be fitted with a pedal drive or an electric motor. If you don’t plan ahead, you’re flushing money.

Not wearing a life jacket and not clipping your kill switch. We just had two people die on Lake Oconee that neglected these safeguards.

New hotels have issues as well, but this property has many advantages including two strong Marriott brands. I start March 10th, so I’ll have a few weeks to relax and fish.

I’m going to hold you to that. The only big tournaments I may fish later this year are Bassmaster at Dale Hollow (June?) and the Native Big Bass Power Hour event in FL in the winter. But I do hope to fish 4 or 5 GA Bass Nation kayak events this year.

Part of not moving right now is that the fishing is about to get really good on the lake I live on. And I don’t mean jump in my kayak and make a run. I mean skip a bait under my dog or drag one along the seawall while letting my dog out. Second, I really want to scout the area and find the right house and neighborhood. I’m going to find a place within 40 minutes of the hotel, so there are a lot of places to look at. Oh - and did I mention that my new hotels will also have a Beer Garden?

I saw that. I like Ocmulgee and caught a 21.75” LMB there last year. On the map I also saw Lake Joy and Houston Lake both have boat ramps. It’s not as great as having a lake in my backyard like I have now, but at least there are nearby options.

Many of you know that for the past four years I have run a hotel on Lake Oconee. I was brought to this property to turn it from a dump to a boutique property. But between Covid and the primary owner getting cold feet, that never materialized. My job is to maximize the profits for the owners, and a few months ago I told them that enough is enough with the stalling. They had only three options. The first was to spend the $2.5M needed to turn it into a boutique hotel. The second was to make it a budget hotel. That meant firing me because I earn to much to run that type of property. I also would never run a budget property. The third was to sell the hotel, which also put me out of a job. They chose door number three, and the hotel is supposed to turn over to the new owners on Thursday. But frankly, for many reasons I think that deal falls through. If it does fall through, the hotel will still be for sale and the owners still won't renovate. With that, I had already begun looking for a new job. Today, I signed a deal for a new job. I will be running two Marriott hotels that are still under construction. The hotels will open in September or October, but I will be on site in two weeks. You can't imagine how much there is to do to get ready to open a new hotel, even if it is still under construction. These hotels will be in Perry, GA on the Ag Center grounds. Since the hotels don't open until the fall, my plan is to still live on Lake Sinclair for another 2-4 months and then move to the Perry area. I hate that the job on Oconee was never completed, but I'm thrilled to be back with Marriott and opening two new hotels.

GA Power cut that tree apart for me for free yesterday and a few hours later the power was back Thankfully, the power wasn’t out for days. I would have had to make a 5 mile kayak run to a convenience store for food!

Well? this stinks. We had a heavy storm very early this morning and I lost power. I went outside after the sun came up and found a steel cable that supports the power lines down in my yard. My driveway is a long, tree covered canopy that goes from the road, through the woods, then opens up to my house on the lake. I made my way from the house and to the road and I saw it in the distance - a big tree was blocking my driveway. As I got closer, I saw the rest of the tree had taken down the power lines. I’ve been without power for 9 hours now and my driveway is still blocked. My little electric chainsaw can’t cut through that tree. The tree companies won’t touch the part of the tree in my driveway until GA Power fixes the power lines. That may take days or up to a week. On one side of my house is the lake, and through a bit of woods on the other side are train tracks. If needed, it looks like I can parallel the train tracks in my truck to get to the road. but it’s a steep incline and the left side of my Bronco would be up high on gravel and the other side low in the dirt. There should be enough room to get away if a train comes off schedule. But that’s a last resort. The good news is that I have a power inverter and can charge phones and lamps from my truck. I can even plug in my air fryer to make a meal.

I think that guy’s name is Jonah. His friend that filmed it is Ahab.

Dugout Bait and Tackle has a great crossbar for only $79. Just note that it doesn’t use a track system for the graphs. You have to drill holes. 100 Ah Weize batteries are only about $220 each. I have used one for my motor and one for my Garmin FFS, Humminbird mapping, lights, heading sensor, and cameras. However, on my recent trip to FL, in order to save weight I ran a 36Ah Weize battery for my electronics only and it lasted a full day of tournament fishing.

There is absolutely no way I would or could car top that beast. First off, I’m 60 years old and not that strong anymore. Second, I have a ton of gear including FFS that adds weight. But even trailering wasn’t enough. Once I added the winch it became a breeze to load and unload.

Great story and good for you getting yourself in better shape. I did chuckle when you said “60 pound kayak” and I’m thinking that I have about 60 pounds of just batteries on my rig.

TLDR: I’m not good enough to go to a new lake on my own and break it down in a day. @FryDog62 is correct in that these teams of kayak anglers have a huge advantage. They can cover lots of water in practice and share information. In this case, we had 14 lakes to choose from in a kayak that moves just over 3 mph. These lakes are all essentially very shallow with no humps, ledges, drop offs, stumps, etc. There are a lot of lily pads and maidencane (Kissimmee grass). The area had been cold for the two weeks prior to the tournament and with that the overly sensitive Florida bass shut down. But there was a warming trend leading up to the tournament and I suspected the bite would be on by tournament day. I was right. During the week of practice I fished Toho twice, Cypress, the southern end of Kissimmee, Hatchineha, and Rosalie. But come tournament day I gambled and launched at the north end of Kissimmee. I had done a lot of research and marked three waypoints, but the closest was a 90 minute run from the ramp. When I got there I found absolutely nothing. I hit the second waypoint and struck out again. I started out to the third waypoint, a major creek that was another 90 minute run. Twenty minutes in I changed my mind and headed for two minor creeks about 15 minutes away. The entire area was full of dense Kissimmee grass, which is like thick, heavy straw that is both matted and grows upward in the water. By now it’s almost noon - 4.5 hours into the tournament and I haven’t had a bite. The leader already has five fish on the board. I shut off my electronics and I tie on a Berkley Pit Boss and start pitching into the dense weeds and land my first fish right away. I got bit the rest of the day but couldn’t hook up. I lost two between 5 and 7 pounds. I had a ton of bites where I set the hook and the bait came flying back at me. It wasn’t until Day 2 that I figured out it was male bass moving the bait off a bed. For Day 2 I headed back to the same spot. I knew there were big fish there. This time, @FryDog62 joined my adventure. Within the first 30 minutes I got a big strike in the heavy Kissimmee grass and I saw her turn. She was 9-10 pounds and she was pulling my 400 pounds of loaded kayak through that heavy grass for a good ten seconds-and then I lost the hookup. I then moved to a different area and punched dense hydrilla and managed one keeper. I went back and fished the Kissimmee grass, had the males toy with my bait, and caught a few too small to submit. I saw the bass move further off shore in the outer bands of Kissimmee grass and they were active along the edges but I couldn’t get bit. One good thing came out of the tournament - I got comfortable with standing and fishing in my kayak. Actually, two good things - I met @Frydog62 and he’s a great guy. He’s also right - you need a team to be competitive. It will also slash expenses. So, maybe sometime we can get 4-5 members here to join up and do some damage in a future event.

Day 1 was a heartbreaker. Heading into last night I wasn’t even sure where I would fish. Most people were struggling to find fish in practice, but a few people said one lake was producing but it was all small bass. My thought was that with the warming trend all week, the bite was about to turn on. So I made a late night call to fish a lake known to hold big bass. I had fished this lake the day before, but this time I headed to the other end of the lake. I looked at my maps, read some history on the lake, and set some waypoints. The problem was the first waypoint was over an hour away. But what made it more difficult was there was a big area where I had no GPS for my navigation unit and no cellular service. With the high reeds and other landmarks in the water it was hard to determine exactly where I was at times. So, after the long haul to the first waypoint and a run to the second I still didn’t have a single bite. It was another long run to my third waypoint and it was already after 11 am. So instead, I cut across the lake towards shore in a 30 minute run. Lines out was at 3:30 and I was running out of time. I shut off my sonar and FFS completely and fished my new, unscripted plan. Within minutes I caught a 16.75” fatty, but it was now noon. The good news was that for the next two hours I was on the bass. The bad news is I caught three undersized ones and I lost SEVEN good fish including two that were 5-7 pounds. The problem was I couldn’t get a good hook set. I was using my Kistler heavy rod and I just couldn’t hook up. I switched to my Expride MHF, but by that time the bite was gone. I should have easily had a limit today. So tomorrow I’m leaving the Kistler in the truck and fishing something else. BTW, @FryDog62 is at this event. He fished the other end of that lake today, but tomorrow we will team up. I’ll let him tell his story.

So, today was an interesting day. I fished a smaller lake and launched from a small, neighborhood ramp. Unbeknownst to me, the soil at the end of the ramp had washed away meaning that the end of the ramp was a ledge. The water was murky and I didn’t see it when I checked out the ramp. So my trailer wheels dropped of that ledge. Instead of launching my kayak first and then pulling up my trailer, I pulled forward. With that, my Malone Ecolight took some damage, knocking it out of square. I parked it, then went fishing. When I returned it was time to fix it with some box wrenches and a big rock. Luckily for me, two retirees from across the street, Roger and Ron, came over to help. Roger brought a few more tools, we loosened some bolts, squared it up, and made it drivable today. In between I had some minor electrical and bluetooth problems that I squared away. After leaving that lake I was headed to another, but there was neither cell phone service nor GPS to use maps and navigation. Half the time on the lake I couldn’t use spot lock because GPS was unavailable. Anyway, I had to drive off a ways to connect to maps and GPS. It was an eventful day. I’m not giving a fishing report because I don’t want to break rules and share information.

I was at Toho yesterday and heard a guy mention that the cold weather the last two weeks has really shut down the fishing. With the weather warming, hopefully that trend changes. Because this is a multi lake tournament, I don’t want to tip off any lurkers by giving away any info regarding my pre-fishing other than saying that most of Toho is choked out with hydrilla. It was really bad. I suppose it would be OK if you paddle, but even with my weedless prop it was impossible to go far without having to clear weeds from the prop.

I had planned to arrive in the area at 8 am this morning (Sunday) and head right to one of the ramps at Toho. Unfortunately, work got in the way on Saturday and I didn’t finish my pack out until 11 pm. We had a system failure with the phones at the hotel on Friday night and I had to go in just before midnight and left at 4 am. With all that, I left after 7 am on Sunday and by the time I checked into my rental home it was 3pm. I was too tired to fish. I’m not happy with losing a day of practice, but it is what it is. I’m going to fish somewhere on the Kissimmee chain on Monday. I’m going to leave out specifics on the lakes I fish somewhere I don’t violate any rules on sharing knowledge.

I’m off to Kissimmee in the morning for the Bassmaster Kayak Series event next weekend. We’re fishing the Kissimmee Chain and have 12 or 13 lakes to choose from. I’ve never fished there before so I’m bringing the kitchen sink. I haven’t even put my luggage in the truck yet. It should be an interesting week. The weather will be consistent for M-F practice, then a front moves in for the tournament weekend. I’m staying at Toho, so I’ll practice there first. I’m not sure where I’m heading after that.

Most of my reels are Curados, but last year I added an SV to my arsenal. I have great disdain for that reel and it may end up on a shelf this year.

I use the ForEverlast Generation 2 net which has a short handle and store it in the left, built in rod holder behind my seat. I like the YakAttack net the OP has, but the trade off is what he’s facing - storage and quick deployment. Of course, I’m trading off not having a long reach with my net. I see some anglers keep their net at their feet on the deck. Everything is a trade off on a kayak. This - but I keep me net on the left side.

Yesterday, we received almost three inches of snow here in Georgia. It then changed to rain, made it a slushy mess, then partially froze. There were accidents everywhere. I decided to hole up at my hotel for the night instead of brave the roads. But by 6 am the roads were in good shape and I headed home. I live about 26 miles from work and received zero snow at my house.

Scope and minnow Scope and minnow Scope and minnow Scope and minnow

Not in person? 😞