Kayak Koz

In his prime, he had a tremendous voice and range. Go to YouTube and see his rendition of our national anthem at the MLB All Star game. Bat Out of Hell was one of the greatest albums of all time. I will fight anyone to the death that disagrees. ?

Very cool. Enjoy the pay and the time off.

Well, I'm a real man, so... (THAT'S A JOKE!!!!) Actually, this is the loading system I'm looking at. I figure that if I can haul 140 pounds of kayak, pedal unit, and gear up the steep hill out back of my hotel after 6 hours of pedaling around the lake that ths solution would be pretty easy.

What I like to throw are spinnerbaits and chatterbaits. But that doesn’t mean I should be throwing those. That being said, over the past 9 months I have primarily used beetlespins as a search bait because both the LMB and stripers will hit it.

At the end of last week we were supposed to receive ice and snow here in central GA and with that we had most of the reservations cancel at my hotel for the weekend. It's also been extremely cold for most of the month, and with that lake traffic and travel is light, topped off by Covid fears slowing travel. And now the weather report is snow and freezing rain beginning Thursday - and you guessed it - more cancellations. I'm not going to make budget this month. The one bright spot is that with it so slow at the hotel this week, I'm going to take a 3 day weekend. That's about as many days off as I've had in the past few months. But I'm betting snow and ice problem will somehow force me in to work this weekend. I can't wait for the weather to warm up so I can get out on my kayak and relax for a few hours.

$26 for my barber haircut including the $5 tip. Last month it was $22 total including the tip.

I went and got a haircut today and the price jumped $5 since I last got it cut. This year I increased the price of my hotel rooms 12% on weekdays and 30% on weekends. The rates will go 20%-30% more when Phase I of renovations is complete in a few months. The price of everything continues to climb and I don't see an end in sight, especially if interest rates rise.

For most of my life I had fished with left hand retrieve spinning gear and when I added baitcasters to my arsenal they were right hand retrieve. With that change it felt weird for a few hours as it took a little practice to get my cadence down. My son started using my baitcaster gear, but when he bought his own baitcaster reel he opted for a left hand retrieve. I cautioned him that it might feel weird, but he insisted. That reel is now gathering dust in a closet. I tried it out a few times and for whatever reason I just could not get comfortable with it. And for me, that's what it comes down to - comfort. Maybe if I had given it more time it would have been fine, but I really enjoy the right hand retrieve baitcasters that I have so I see no reason to change. Give it a try. Maybe you like it. Maybe if I was catching tuna or tarpon I'd prefer the rod to be in my right hand, but for bass holding the rod in my left hand is just fine.

What is this ice that you speak of? ? While it’s true we don’t have ice here in the south, bass metabolism is relative to their environment. While the bass may start becoming active in upper 50 degree water temperature up north, they’re still sluggish at that temperature down here.

Let me think - St. Croix, Shimano, Dobyns, Lew's, Duckett, BPS, and Shakespeare. The St. Croix and Shimano I bought online because of reputation. I actually haven't tried out my Shimano Expride yet. The rest I bought after picking them up in the store.

When I lived in SC I would usually go fishing 4-5 times a week except when I was coaching baseball. Even then I would head out 2-3 times a week. It didn't matter if it was 50 degrees or 98 degrees, I was out there. With literally hundreds of lagoons to bank fish from, you could usually find a lagoon where they were biting. Fast forward to this past year when I moved to GA and things changed quite a bit. I'm fishing on a big lake, and I bought a pedal kayak. I love heading out on that kayak, but the striper and largemouth bass fishing was lousy this year because GA Power screwed up the lake. With that my interested waned, and there were plenty of nights when I went to bed thinking about going fishing the next day but decided against it come morning. Part of that was probably because I stored and launched my kayak at my hotel and I just didn't want to get sucked in to working on my day off. But most of it was the lousy fishing. GA Power has made efforts this winter to fix the issues they caused with the lake, and hopefully the fishing is better. If that's the case I will be out there more often. The lease on my house is up late in teh spring, and I'm hoping to find a place to rent on the lake so I can launch from home.

I've seen those as well and will probably look into that. My kayak is 90 pounds not including the seat, and of course the 22 pound pedal drive is not included in that and is transported separately anyway. I do have the rudder to content with, but it can be easily raised or lowered as needed. The good news is that I **think** I have finally decided on a vehicle to purchase. I was initially looking at the Subaru Crosstrek, Forrester, or Outback. But at least in my area these are in short supply and are way of MSRP and the ones I can find don't include all of the options or color that I want. So now I think my choice is going to be a four door Ford Bronco Sport Big Bend or Outer Banks.

The worse the bite, the deeper I dig into my tackle.

I really like the VMC Touch-Lok snaps. They are fairly low profile and they are durable. But I really want to see if the bait action changes that much by tying directly.

Pretty women ?

Beetlespins have been productive this winter, even if they have only been dinks.

Spinnerbaits and more spinnerbaits in white, chartreuse, and a combination of those colors.

Something simple. I’m going to rely less on Touch-Loc snaps and directly tie on more baits this year.

Obviously, it’s time to retire from fishing and take up needlepoint. ?

I read through the documentation and watched a video or two. I also spool braid on all of my baitcasters and put 40 pound braid on my new DC. I don't have any problems with backlashing any of my baitcasters. The reason I opted for the DC was that it supposedly gives me the versatility to throw some lighter baits, hopefully with more distance in my casts than my other baitcasters.

Finally received both the Curado DC and the Expride. But wouldn't you know it, work kept me busy all week. I'm off today and tomorrow but it's 35 degrees outside and I've also been battling a cold all week. I'm going to chug some Nyquil and try and sleep for the next 16 hours and hopefully I'm feeling well enough tomorrow to get out there.

I have a pedal kayak as well and I did purchase a cheap $75 paddle as well. The only time I really use it is when launching or coming in to dock as I don't drop the pedal drive until I'm in deeper water. Other than that, it stays strapped to the side of my kayak. I may regret that if I ever have a breakdown, but I also carry a steel cable and a padlock just in case I break down and have to tie the kayak up somewhere and hoof it back to my launch point.

MY hotel has kayaks canoes, and a pedal boat for guests to rent and we keep them locked up on a wood rack. When a guest rents one, they get a key to unlock and and when they are done they are supposed to lock it back up on the rack. The pedal boat is heavy to begin with and it tends to get filled with water. Frankly, it's a death trap because it's suited for a pond and not a big lake. One day I'm doing a property walk and the pedal boat is missing. It seems a guest didn't lock it back up, but I found it had drifted to the back of our cove so I grabbed my own kayak and towed it back in. A few weeks later I'm on another property walk and the pedal boat and two Adirondack chairs are missing and nowhere to be found. So I grabbed my kayak again and searched our cove using my sides can and down scan thinking some guest might have sunk them in the lake. Nothing. A week later we have a group in house, and one of the attendees hears me talking about our missing pedal boat and chairs, and he asks me to describe the pedal boat. Sure enough, it had drifted away and hung up on his dock about a mile away. I told him how much I hated that thing and he wrote me a check for it on the spot. Whenever guests would take out that pedal boat I would warn them to stay near the shore and not head out to the middle of the lake with all of the boat traffic. If they wanted to cross to the other side I told them to do so in the no wake zones. With two plus sized adults in there it would be easy for that thing to get swamped. So one day I'm out fishing in my pedal kayak and I see two of our guests off in the distance in the middle of the cruising zone in the lake and they're not moving. I watch for a few minutes and the are still sitting there. So I trek on over and sure enough they are too tired to keep going and the pedal boat had taken on water. I ended up towing them 3/4 mile back to the hotel. I'm glad we're rid of that thing.

I have that game on my PS4. Cast in front of near side of the bridge and land tanks all day long.

I'm glad it worked out for you! I love fishing the lagoons in the SC Lowcountry. You can get really spoiled fishing there with all of the 4 and 5 pounders that are common to catch. I've never had the pleasure myself, but I've seen plenty of double digit bass taken out of those types of lagoons as well.