I took last week off so I could give my bum knee and left shoulder a break and a chance to rest. My only non-surgically replaced knee is just about ready to be replaced and I gotta say that right after our trip to Lake Hartwell it was very sore. I’m not sure how many casts I made at Hartwell but 4 days of cast after cast fishing had stretched those shoulder ligaments to the point that I would have to reset my shoulder back into socket after every cast. The week I took off allowed my shoulder to tighten back up and my knee to rest a bit. I can’t help but think that all those years playing sports and running races is now taking its toll on me. When it comes to sports and athletics, I’ve always said: “you can be good at a lot of things or you can be great at one thing”, I chose to be good at a lot of things. I’ve written this a few times before, but I’ll write it again. When I was in my late thirties I was stationed at a small air base in Belle Chase, Louisiana. The base had a weekly golf league and a pretty competitive softball league. The base was also just a few miles from the marsh and some of the best fishing in the country. My perfect day was an early morning fishing trip to the marsh, followed by an afternoon golf league match and to finish off the perfect day, a good hard played softball game under the lights. Those sports were a lot of fun, and I wouldn’t trade those memories for the world but all those things I put my body through are coming back to haunt me in the form of worn-down joints and lots of arthritis. Running around flight lines and flight decks, plus climbing all over fighter jets day and night didn’t help either. My body has gotten tired.

This week I was on the lake just about every day. I kinda eased back into it and by weeks end I had figured out a pattern that worked pretty well for me. It seemed that there was two different topwater bites going on, one in the early morning hours and one in mid to late afternoon. The one in the early morning hours was a “right place, right time” bite and the afternoon bite was a reactionary bite. In the early morning hours that I was out I kept my head on a swivel out in the creek to find where the fish were surfacing. I watched points and humps all around me because if there were fish surfacing, there were fish feeding on bait. If there was fish feeding on bait, it was on my list of areas to hit very soon. The way I caught my morning fish took some patience. I would pull up to a point and wait, not making a cast right away but just wait. I would say that within the first 5 minutes of me waiting, a fish or a school of fish would surface and reveal themselves. If I was in the right place at the right time, I could get a cast into the area quickly because the window of opportunity closed fast. I had about a 10-15 second window to get them to re-surface after they had gone back down. If they were still on the surface and I made a cast into them. it was a lock that I was going to connect. The biggest question was what I was going to connect with? It could be an 8-inch fish schooling with a few 4-5lb fish, or it could be the biggest in the bunch. Once again, this week I hooked 3 different fish on one cast, first being a larger fish that quickly shook off, then a dink that shook off, followed by a nice 3lber that I got to the boat, all on the same cast.

One of the most important aspects of my success in the morning was finding the little patches or veins of chop on the water’s surface caused by morning breezes in the creek or across the main lake. If I could find points or humps that had a chop across the surface, my key bait this week was the chrome 95 gunfish. That thing was deadly this week on my spinning rig with 20lb Cast Co. braid and an 8-foot Seaguar 8lb Invisex fluorocarbon leader on a Shimano Stradic 2500. My rod is a 7-foot medium St Croix Triumph, and I can shoot that little Gunfish like a missile with that Cast braid. Making a long cast was key also. Sometimes a fish would come up just out of casting range with straight flouro but using the braid has extended my casting distance by a good 30+ feet. Here’s a picture of a couple different Gunfish that did a lot of work this week. A big striper tore off with the split ring and hook on the bottom one.

After the wind died down about mid-morning this week, there was usually a lull in the action but about early to mid-afternoon the breezes would pick back up and I could chase the chop again. One good thing about the afternoon bite and using chrome baits is the flash effect. In the afternoon sun the fish would react to the flash from the chrome a lot. By moving the bait in a side to side, walking the dog fashion the bait would flash in the sun. the flash would cause the fish to school and react to it. Sometimes the bait would just be floating stationary on the surface if I got distracted and out of nowhere a fish would just explode on the stationary bait. I also watched schools follow the chrome bait all the way back to the boat without reacting to it but definitely the flashing chrome was the key in the afternoons and evening. Finding the patches of chop and matching it with productive areas was the biggest key to my success this week and having the right bait for the task put my fish in the boat.

The surface temps hit 80+ degrees on my Garmin yesterday afternoon and I saw plenty of schools of bluebacks moving around the creek from top to bottom. No visible thermocline has set up yet, but it won’t be long till we should be able to add a spybait bite and drop shot to my deck. The ale is a little above full pool and the corps is generating a few hours in the evenings. Have a safe Memorial Day weekend! Here’s a few of my bigger memorable fish from the week.