Kayak Koz

I've used 20 pound Power Pro in the past and found it was extremely vulnerable to getting nicked on even small branches and aquatic vegetation. Since then I won't use anything less than 30 lb braid although my preference is 40 lb braid for most purposes.

That was awesome! Fun fact: I attended a tryout for Team USA prior to the 1984 Olympics. I was cut in 20 minutes!

No. Gator teeth are spaced apart and even if it grabbed only the line the line would settle between the teeth then the bait would have slid up against the snout and I would have felt that. The gator would also instinctively have kept his jaws shut at that time. Somewhere on BR in a post I made 3 or 4 years ago is a video of a baby gator that I reeled in when it would not let go of a soft bodied frog that I was throwing.

I not only vary retrieves on different casts, but I will employ multiple techniques within a cast. For example, I may cast a chatterbait and let it fall to the bottom, then maybe drag it, hop it, or lift and drop a bit, then crank it for 10 or 15 feet, let it fall, and do somethink else between cranks. I may let it site for 5 or ten seconds (I actually count), but I simply can't dead stick it and let the bait sit for minutes at a time.

I grew up fishing in New England and in Canada and we fished for pike but with live bait and not lures so I never experienced that.

This winter I’ve been bringing two rods, one with a 6.x reel and the other with a 7.x reel and with the 6 I’ll slow roll some moving baits. I like baits like chatterbaits that I can swim, lift and drop, or drag. But the dead stick stuff drives me nuts. Now that the gators are inactive in the cold weather maybe I’ll throw something under a bobber tomorrow. I did catch a dink on a beetle spin today so it wasn’t a total loss. But that dink was swimbait size and I was tempted to use it as bait.

So I went fishing for an hour today and as usual my mind was churning. After a great spell of winter fishing the bite has been just about non-existent this past week. I tried fishing s-l-o-w with a ned rig the other day and I just could not do it. So then I got to thinking why I hate fishing slow, especially in the winter. My answers are based upon the fact that I bank fish in man made lagoons that have pretty much the same depth throughout. With the rotted vegetation along the shoreline the baitfish and bass have moved away from the banks and my assumption is that they are going to be clustered in the lowest parts of the basin, even if it is only a foot lower than the main basin. Unfortunately, that's out of casting range in most lagoons. So my reasoning for not fishing slow is that I could spend two hours fishing a small section of the basin and I have zero idea if there's a bass anywhere near where I am fishing. If was in a boat and I had electronics and could confirm there were fish in the area I think I'd be more likely to fish it slow. But with not knowing if there are any fish near my casting area I feel I have a better chance at catching something by traversing the banks or moving on to the next lagoon. In the summer it's a bit different. I can fish slow for a while because I know that the bass will be cruising the basin at some point in the day. Not so in the winter where they may stay pit for days before deciding the need to forage a bit for food. For me, I also think sitting or standing plays a role. Standing along the bank I fish like people use their trolling motor - I'm on the move covering water. However, today I did throw a portable camping stool in my trunk and I may give that a try while fishing later this week. So, what do you think about fishing really, really slow? Love it? Hate it?

We have bowfin in some lagoons although I haven't seen or caught any in that specific lagoon. I've caught bowfin before and they usually hit the bait very hard. In this case I felt the resonance of a strike that was a thump-thump like something nipped the trailer and not the bait. When that happens I stopped reeling for a second simulating a stunned baitfish. Maybe in that brief pause is when the line severed. It would have to be a big bowfin to engulf the entire bait, but maybe as the bait fell the bowfin hit the line instead of the bait. Anyway, I've been fishing for 50 years and never had that happen before. It was weird, but as I see now it has happened to others.

I once had a large turtle, I think it was a box turtle, come up from underneath and hit a topwater with treble hooks. It ended up getting hooked in the top and bottom of its mouth. It took me probably a good 30 minutes to get the hooks out of him, mainly because he kept trying to pull back into his shell. His neck muscles were strong and we had a tug of war until he got tired enough for me to get access to remove the treble hook.

No pickerel here. We have largemouth, catfish, bowfin, bluegill, and white crappie. I’ve seen a few small (less than one foot) gar in one other lagoon but nowhere near this one. I’ve never seen gar in any other lagoon and I’ve fished about 300 in this area. A few lagoons have striped bass. Toothy fish like pickerel and walleye can be found in the northern part of SC.

Fishing has been completely lousy here the past week. We had 3 or 4 days of nighttime temperatures in the 20's and 30's with daytime highs in the 40's and that was followed by 4 days of nighttime temps in the upper 50's and 60's and daytime temps in the 60's and 70's. A little rain, but mostly clouds. I haven't caught anything since two days into the cold snap. Anyway, I soldier on and head out to fish for a while in a lagoon that's been decent fish all winter. With this one in particular, the larger body of water has a "finger" that extends for about 150 yards and is about 60 feet across. In the summer, where it dead ends has a lot of good shoreline and aquatic vegetation and we've caught our fair share of 5 pounders there. So I'm down near that end, toss a 3/8 spinnerbait with a paddletail trailer and while reeling in I feel the vibration and thump-thump of a strike. I motion to set the hook and come up empty. I mean really empty. No fish and no more spinnerbait. And there was no pull or any type of resistance when I tried to set the hook. Nothing was there. I had just tied on so the know was fresh. I'm fishing 40 pound braid and when I reel in the line I see the line is shredded. Since I cut the tag end cleanly with scissors I'm pretty sure it wasn't a poor knot that caused my to lose the lure. Our lagoons are man made and we don't have rocks or stumps or anything like that in the water. Except for the occasional bowfin we don't have toothy creatures. We have carp as well, but if I snagged a scale I think I would have felt a lot more. Well, we have gators but they don't have sharp line cutting teeth and they usually just grab the bait and hold on, so it was definitely not a gator. I tied on another spinnerbait and made about 20 casts back to that area thinking maybe there was some unseen structure in the water that cut my line but didn't feel the bait hit anything. If I was fishing 20 pound braid I could see the line rubbing against something and the line being cut. I guess the most logical explanation is that the line had previously been nicked and I did not notice it and when the fish hot the bait the line broke. I just hope the bait fell to the bottom and it isn't lodge in the mouth of a bass. But it certainly was weird to try and set the hook and not even my lure was on the end of my line.

My two biggest LMB were both just under 7 pounds (still haven't cracked 7) and both caught on a Strike King buzzbait in the Sexy Shad color. I caught a ton of 4 and 5 pounders on that as well. So much so that they destroyed two of them and I had to buy a third by the end of the summer.

Nice catch. I would say in the 4 pound range. In my expert five pounds and up is really noticeable. Guesses wouldn’t be in the 3-4+ range.

My goal is to catch bigger bass this year. I caught a ton of 5 and 6 pound bass when I managed to find time to fish. While that's both exciting and great, I think that it led to complacency and "bad habits". What I mean by that is that I need to think and fish differently if I want to catch bigger bass and not assume that there's a 10 pound bass hanging out with the six pounders or that they will bite the same baits and presentations. The obvious first step would be to fish at night, but I bank fish in gator territory and I'm not comfortable (OK, I'm somewhat terrified) fishing at night when I've already had enough issues with alligators during the day. I also need to fish some new lagoons and not fall back on my favorites. I'll probably have to jig and worm fish more. It will be interesting to see if I can break my complacency and really do what it takes to land a giant.

Awww - that was a disappointing post. I saw "BFS" and automatically thought Bowling For Soup.

Good read. Glad to see there's other chuck and wind guys here. I can't fish slow for long as I get impatient. I mean, if I'm going to fish slow I might as well throw some live bait under a bobber so I can grab another rod and throw a chatterbait or other moving bait. Good read.

I had a partially torn bicep and it took about 4 months to heal which was a pain since I coach baseball and could not throw. For most daily activities I was pain free, but certain twisting motions or raising of the arm motions left me in excruciating pain. As for fishing, I was still able to fish with little or no pain. Tuck your elbow in front of your body or against your side and cast overhand using your forearm. hinging at the elbow. You're going to find out that with a baitcaster you don't need to muscle your casts to cast far. Play with the brakes and the tension instead of trying o muscle it out there. Your first thought might be that decreasing or removing your brakes is going to cause a lot of bird's nests. But casting smooth in the method I described will result in long casts without fouling your line around the spool.

Half the lagoons I fish have perpetually stained water due to stormwater runoff so I fish them all the time. The color doesn’t matter. Chatterbaits, Colorado blade spinnerbaits, or anything that thumps gets their attention. Displacing water is what is important, not the color of the bait.

I must be one of the few people in the world that finds braid easier to cast than mono on a baitcaster. I tried mono once and spent more time picking out backlashes than actually fishing. I finally cut it all out and spooled up braid right there on the bank.

When I was young the rule was we could get up early and open our stockings but not wake my parents up until 8 am. I tried that with my son when he was young but it didn't work, He'd wake me up at the crack of dawn to show me what was in his stocking. The tough part was no sleep those nights. I'd have to wait until he fell asleep to put together whatever needed to be built out in the garage and then sneak all the presents in under the tree. Now that he's older he prefers to sleep in until he smells the bacon cooking.

I like the Winn grips on both the rod and reel as well. I know some people hate them, but I find them comfortable.

As some of you may remember from an earlier thread I posted, my Lew's Mach 2 rod broke in a strange spot the other week and even though it was out of warranty, the good folks at Lew's felt my pain and considered it such an odd break they sent me a replacement rod for free. Because they did not have a ready supply of Mach 2 rods available they substituted a rod at the same price point of $99. That rod was the TP1X. To be specific, it is the baitcast model TP1X70M which is an all purpose rod. I have no idea how comparable there other model numbers are to this rod. I paired it with my Lew's Mach 2 SLP reel that was on the rod that I broke. I figured this would give me an honest comparison of the rods. When I got the rod there were a few things I noticed right away. First, it was a great looking rod and appears to be well built. There were no obvious defects. Second, despite having a thicker shaft than the Mach 2, it felt lighter (although I can't be sure). But it felt light and well balanced for my needs. Comfort Out on the water, the first thing I noticed was the grip diameter was larger than my Mach 2. Sine I don't have big hands this became an issue for the first few days as my hand and arm grew tired quickly. However, after fishing with it for about a week now it's not much of a problem. So this isn't a problem with the rod, it's just my personal preference. Casting This is where this rod really shines. Remember, I paired it with that same Mach 2 reel. Not only can I cast noticeably further with this rod, but also the accuracy with this pairing is far superior. I'm landing casts on dimes here. It's the same 7 foot length as my old rod, but the blank is noticeably different not only in construction, but also with larger eyelets. I can't express how good this rod feels to cast. Sensitivity During the past week with this rod I caught over a dozen bass, Two were dinks, two were over 5 pounds, and the rest were all 3 - 3.5 pounds. Not a big sample size, but a good start. I used chatterbaits, spinnerbaits, t-rigged worms, crankbaits, lipless cranks, buzzbaits, Whopper Ploppers, and beetlespins. All the bass I caught were on chatterbaits, spinnerbaits, and beetlespins, nothing else. The one thing that I like about my now deceased Mach 2 rod was its sensitivity. When the fish went after the bait it was like, "OK, there it is - wait - now set the hook!" It's like I could feel the bass pushing water, sucking in the bait, and then grabbing the bait. But with the TP1X it's like, "Oh - a bass seems to have impaled itself on my hook." I'm not feeling that same level of sensitivity. Even running through weeds or bumping into structure doesn't provide the same feedback that I'm accustomed to. Let me give another example. I'm fishing a chatterbait with a craw trailer. As I'm reeling in it feel like I bumped the chatterbait off of a log in an area where I fished a thousand times before and I know there's no log. But when I get the bait in I see one of the claws on the craw trailer was bit off. This actually happened twice. With the Mach 2 I would have felt a vibration through the rod instead of a thud. Now keep in mind this is an all purpose rod. Since the model number of my old Mach 2 doesn't match up to the new Mach 2 model numbers I have no idea if that rod was an all purpose rod or a specialty rod. I just know it's a lot different than the TP1X. Now perhaps when I fish the TP1X I will pick up on more subtleties. Or maybe I need to switch from my normal 40 pound braid to something else. What I worry about is I am missing bites or the opportunity to slow the bait and let the bass grab it. What I have found since I got this rod is that I switch out to other rods more frequently. While switching rods is common for a lot of anglers, since I bank fish and usually walk miles from lagoon to lagoon and I constantly move down the bank while I'm fishing I prefer using just one rod. Now I find myself carrying two rods although the TP1X has been my primary rod. Where I think this rod will truly shine is with buzzbaits and other topwaters. And since buzzbaits are my most used baits during the warmer months this makes it an ideal rod for me. Unfortunately, I had no takers on topwaters this week so I could not test out the backbone, but it certainly appears to be stout enough for the task. Overall, I like this rod and it will serve as the primary rod in my arsenal. As for my perceived lack of sensitivity in the rod compared to my old Mach 2, the TP1X model I have is designated as an all purpose rod and in order to accomplish that there are some tradeoff. I think it leans more to a topwater rod than a bottom contact rod and that's understandable. It definitely lives up to it's purpose. With that, my grade is two thumbs up. If you have a TP1X what do you think of it?

This thread got me thinking. Remember when you were a kid and you would reel in your lure and say, "Oh man! Weeds again!" How times have changed. Today you go looking for those weed beds.

I'm going to have to guess here, but odds are it was a yellow perch in my hometown of Newtown, CT. Yes, THAT Newtown. But it was a small, quiet New England town back then. I was probably 7 or 8 and we used to bike everywhere at that time. There was a pond of of Castle Hill Road (not Taunton Lake) and what I remember about it was that there was an old, white pump house and a few GIANT boulders where we would sit and fish. I don't recall catching any bass there, but there were tons of yellow perch and sunfish. Tackle was almost non existent for us kids. We bobber fished with worms for the most part, but I also remember using a Mepps inline spinner and a small Red Devil spoon. My first bass was probably at Bantam Lake in CT or Lake Bomoseen in VT. We did a lot of camping in those places when I was a kid.

I use that bow and arrow technique when I'm hung up on something under the surface and it works like a charm.