Diet: Water fast 63 hours in before morning toast and Jelly
Back out at Big Creek at 8am again today. The Ryze mushroom mocha sleep aid I took last night didn’t do much and I didn’t really get a lot of sleep, but I forced myself to get back out there, and I pushed it a little bit further this morning. Lots of sweat today so I decided to weigh myself after my walk this morning and pull off my shoes. Danged if the scale didn’t say 203 even! I told my son yesterday that I thought I could get down to 200 or less by next Monday but we’ll have to see how that goes.
Right now, it’s all I can do to keep from running. I feel like a mustang, ready to tear off like I used to, but I know I need to take it easy, or I’ll wind up with an injury. I gotta say though, it’s hard to watch all those runners pass me by while I’m just taking a brisk walk. I need to stay humble and keep watching all those runners pass me by because every one of those runners just motivates me more.
After 63 hours of nothing but water and 1 Fresca, I finally broke down and ate a slice of toast with preserves this morning as well as some soup for lunch and I’ll have some chicken and asparagus this evening. My goal was 72 hours of fasting with just water but after my walk today, I had to put something on my stomach besides toast. I have a procedure tomorrow which requires me to take a valium this evening and then another in the morning, so I definitely want to get something in my stomach before I start on the valium. This was my second fast and I pushed it just a little further with just water this time. The last time I fasted, which was a few weeks back, I had soup and chicken and asparagus after 48 hours.
Today started just like I figured it would. Early this morning I was trying to talk myself out of walking because my legs were feeling a little rough but that’s always been pretty much normal. There’s usually a part of my mind that doesn’t want to put in the work but thankfully I grown to recognize that and tune it out. I was once again out at Big Creek at 8am this morning and looking to go just a little further. When I first started it was painful but once I got going, it all came together.
I’ll say this about the mushroom coffee; I’m starting to feel some benefits. Today I had a little less anxiety, the energy level was up, and I felt pretty good compared to the last week. I ordered the sleep mix, and I’ll give that a try tonight. Sleep for me is like 4-6 hours of crazy town. There’s snoring, farting, cramping, sweating and lots of hot flashes followed by cold chills. There are moaning nightmares at midnight, cats doing zoomies across my face at 2am and of course, I have to pee at 3am. Let’s see if that mushroom coffee sleep aid can help with all that.
Once I got going on the trail, everything kicked into gear after the first 10 minutes and muscles started to loosen up. About 30 minutes into my walk, I felt that old surge, or “runners high”. If you’ve never experienced runners high, it’s kinda hard to describe but it is a small feeling of euphoria, and I get very comfortable in my pace. It’s like I put it on the cruise control, and I could run forever. Today was a good day and looking forward to tomorrow. I think I’m going to travel to some of the different trails I’ve run over the years and log a few miles. There’s the Silver Comet and the Chattahoochee River run down in the Cobb Co. area and my oldest favorite, Kennesaw Battleground. We’ll see how everything goes with some brisk walking for a few weeks and controlled weight loss.
Chances are that if I run to soon with too much weight on my knees, it will result in stress fractures, so I need to get down into the 175lb range to even think about a 5k. It’s possible to run on two replaced knees but I need to be smart about it. Basically, there’s a metal ball attached to my femur, and it rolls back and forth on a silicone pad on top of the tibia/fibula. My surgeons have told me that the silicone pad has a life expectancy of at least 10 years but if I run, the pad will wear down much quicker. I’m sure weight is a factor on how quick that pad will wear out, but stress fractures in the femur or the tibia/fibula near the knee would probably develop with too much weight, and that would be a showstopper for a while. I had 2 stress fractures in my right tibia back in 96 and even at 36 years old back then, it put me on the sidelines for more than a month. No telling how long it would take to heal at 65 years old.
Thirty years ago, I was invited on a six-mile run with a few officers in my squadron. That six-mile run changed the trajectory of my life and interests, and for the next ten years I enjoyed competitive running, working very hard to compete. I took great care of my body during that ten-year span; I was at my physical peak and some of my very fondest memories were packed inside those 10 years. If you would like to read more about my competitive running years while in the Navy, click on the following link: https://castawayblog.com/2022/07/06/the-running-years/
Twenty years ago, I took a boat ride with a few fishermen. That boat ride changed the trajectory of my life and interests, and for the next twenty years I learned everything I could about fishing on Lake Lanier. I really enjoyed competitive fishing during that span and some of my favorite tournament memories came from that twenty-year span. I’ve really enjoyed fishing here in the south, living on Lanier, meeting fishermen and learning so much about fishing here over those twenty years. I’ve always thought about writing a book about my knowledge learned here on Lanier and I’m still working on that. I’ll have more to follow on that.
A week ago, I was visited in a dream by someone from my past very dear to me, and I was left with an epiphany to make another change which brings me to today. For the past week I’ve been in this battle between the status quo and making a change in my life and interests. For the past 15 years I’ve let myself go, being overweight and completely out of shape. In that span both shoulders have been repaired and are shot again, my knees have been replaced, my spine was surgically repaired and among other injuries throw in three hernia patches as well. Needless to say, I’m probably in pretty rough shape but today I laced up my old Asics running shoes and went for a little walk.
The picture above was taken at the Big Creek trail here in Cumming. It’s just a few miles from my house and I’ve spent hours and hours running this trail over the years. During marathon training it was one of my favorite places to make my long runs. The Big Creek trail runs from Cumming down to Alpharetta and beyond. Years ago, I was a member at the YMCA in Alpharetta and the Big Creek trail runs right next to the parking lot there, so I would usually work out at the Y and then run anywhere from 3-15 miles on the trail. It’s also a great walking trail and if you’ve never checked it out, here’s a link to a website that might be helpful: https://www.bigcreekgreenway.com/
It’s been years since I’ve been to the Big Creek trail but this morning I made a visit. My plan was just a mild walk for an hour or so, just to see how the legs felt. I also started another fast this morning and this time it’s just 2 cups of mushroom coffee in the morning and then just water after that throughout the day. On my last fast, I ate some boiled chicken and steamed asparagus from time to time but this time I’m going to just water fast and test my body with less this time. The mushroom coffee is something new and we’ll have to see how that works out. Here’s a pic of the mushroom coffee I use. some of you might recognize it.
The jury is still out on this stuff, but we’ll see how it does over time. Today my walk felt great, and I really enjoyed being on the trail again. At one point during my walk when there was no one around I started running just to feel it again and it felt great! Obviously, I wasn’t moving fast but I was running, not once but three different times and on my third little run, thankfully no one was around, and I was wearing sunglasses because the tears started flowing. The sites, the smells and the people on the trail filled my mind with old memories and I realized how much I missed the trail and running. I know I need to take small steps but barring any setbacks, my goal is to run again by summers end and be able to run down that beautiful trail when the leaves are turning this fall.
I’ll bet you’re wondering about that catchy title, but that’s about what it boiled down to this week. I did incorporate more Livescope to locate fish, mainly when using the crankbait, and I found it to be pretty amazing watching the fish react to the crankbait as it got close to them. Earlier this week, I was watching my crankbait swim along using Livescope, and as the crankbait swam along, fish started coming up off the bottom, one right after another, in a straight line towards the crankbait. It was almost like watching a hatching of termites as they all leave the ground nest; the fish were appearing from the same little area on the bottom and swimming up to check out the crankbait. Inevitably, as the group of bass spectators gathered around the crankbait, one from the group would break camp, as if to say, “I’m your Huckleberry,” and attack the crankbait.I caught a lot of Huckleberries this week, and the crankbait prevailed again as my favorite bait for the week.
Last week I had an old friend in my boat, and we were reminiscing about growing up in the Midwest and fishing farm ponds as a kid. My old friend Greg’s dad used to take him fishing as a kid just like my dad used to take me fishing as a kid. I told Greg that the most important thing I learned from those fishing trips was patience. My dad would have me sitting on the bank of the pond watching our catfish rods and just waiting for a catfish to take the bait. If I got up and wandered around, my dad would reel in the fish, and I would miss out, so I always stayed pretty close to those rods and waited. I learned to be patient on those pond dykes as a kid and it still helps today.
I had Lisa out with me last week and I wanted her to catch a fish or two on the crankbait I’ve been using so I gave her the rod and bait I had been using to catch my crankbait fish. I grabbed another rod and tied the exact same bait on the same leader and main line. Everything we had was exactly the same. We started out beating some rocky bank in the creek that had wind blowing on it, and I knew there would probably be some fish on it. Within a 100 yard stretch I had put 3 solid fish in the boat and Lisa still hadn’t had a sniff. We moved to a different area, and I boated a couple more fish and still nothing for Lisa, so I started trying to figure out the difference in what I was doing and what she was doing. It was obvious that there was a difference after I had a half dozen fish in the boat and Lisa had none. One thing that stood out was her retrieve was much more deliberate and at a quicker pace. Generally, when Lisa and I are using crankbaits, we’re trying to make contact or stay in contact with the bottom as long as possible, but as we get into late spring the shad spawn begins, and the bass start thinking about chasing shad. Crankbaits that are more shallow divers and bare a shad pattern are more successful this time of year and just swimming the crankbait with a slow retrieve just below the surface often triggers a strike. I showed Lisa the slower speed and explained to her that the bait just needed a slow retrieve with the rod tip down. It didn’t take long after Lisa made the adjustment, she started catching more fish and put 3 in the boat shortly afterwards. It just took a little patience with that slower speed to get the fish to react.
The bite had just about everything to do with the speed of the crankbait for me this week but I gotta brag on the gear I used to make it a fun week of cranking. First, Jeff Nail and St Croix hooked me up with a sweet 7’3″ mxf Black Bass spinning rod for helping represent St Croix at a Scheel’s event at Lake Lanier Islands this past winter. I put one of my Shimano Stradic 2500’s on the rod and loaded it with 20lb Cast Co. braid. Casting distance is very important to me and hands down; Cast Co. braid is the best on the market when it comes to casting distance. For my leader I’m using about 8-10 feet of 8lb Seaguar Invizx and tying the two together with my Cast Away knot. My crankbait of choice for the last few weeks has been the Rapala DT-8 in green gizzard shad and it’s been my best percentage bait for a while.
I’ve found a little bit of topwater here and there, but it’s mainly been a “right place right time” event with the topwater. Yesterday I was able to call more fish up to the surface than in previous days so maybe that’s a good sign for days to come with the topwater bite. I did also get on a little tear with a jerkbait earlier in the week but my “cast to catch” percentage was low with that bait so I gravitated back to the DT-8 which yielded a higher percentage.
Closing in on the weeks end, I was down to 2 baits; it was the little chrome Azuma Zdog walking bait for my starting bait and after a cast or two I would go to work with the crankbait. If there was no wind in the area I was fishing, I’d usually go right to the crankbait and forego topwater all together. The Livescope came into play all week as I used it to locate fish and then I’d usually turn the transducer away from the fish after I made my cast. If the fish were up in the water column and there was wind, I would go with the topwater, and if the fish were down in the water column, I would go with the crankbait. After a few topwater casts, whether I caught a fish or not, I’d switch over to the crankbait and start casting around fish. The technique with the crankbait was pretty simple, I could cast the crankbait about 120-130 feet on average and my Livescope is set to 100 feet looking forward, so my cast covers everything inside the Livescope screen on the retrieve. If there’s at least 5-10 fish inside the screen and I run my crankbait through them, more than likely one of those fish is going to chase it down and strike at it. Speed was the most important part and most of the time the DT-8 was only 4-6 feet below the surface on the retrieve and that put it right in the zone over the deeper brush. The retrieve kinda reminds me of the spybait retrieve, once you get locked into the right speed and start catching more fish, you gain more confidence in the process.
Location for throwing the crankbait this week was pretty forgiving and I focused on a lot of brush out on the ends of points and I was just blind casting around points and rocky areas most of the time. A lot of my fish this week came from at least 15 feet of water and the deepest crankbait fish I caught this week was from 32 feet of water. It didn’t really matter to the fish. If the fish was suspended and there was a group, one was probably going to go after it no matter what depth it was. Once again, the key was the speed.
That’s about all I did this week which gave me the best results. The lake is about a foot above full pool and the surface temps are in the mid to low 70’s right now. He’s a few pics from my week.
This week was about as short as it gets for me. Yesterday was the only day that I got an early start and stayed out till mid-afternoon this week. I fished a few hours earlier in the week, but I really didn’t get a handle on things until today. The way my morning started this morning was with some topwater at dawn after seeing a few surfacing fish on a point in the creek. They were shallow and chasing bluebacks on the surface, so I tied on the Spro Epop in the emerald color, and it didn’t take long till a fish came completely out of the water, blowing up on the popper. It was my first topwater fish for 2025 and it was on the emerald color. It reminded me of catching fish in late March years ago on the old emerald popper. I generally use the popper if I see surfacing fish but it’s also a good idea to start throwing it around those shallow pockets very early in the morning right now. Yesterday I found that the fish were actively feeding on top for about the first hour of sunrise. The popper bite will improve over the next couple months but it’s a good idea to have it tied on and ready.
The second bait I used with success yesterday was the Damiki Keitech swimbait over brush and on points. I like the little Damiki rig when it’s flat in the early morning hours because I’ve found over the years that the bass can react to smaller baits in flat conditions, better than larger baits. Basically, it’s easier to fool them with the little 2.8 Keitech on a 1/4-ounce Damiki head, whether it’s over brush or just blind casting a point early in the morning. If you’re using Livescope, it’s just as easy as locating fish in the tops of the timber or brushpiles, and making a cast just beyond the target area, counting to ten and a slow retrieve back to the boat. I can also cast to single fish or small wolf packs with the little swimbait using Livescope and it kinda reminds me of sight fishing redfish in the marshes of Louisiana. You can also use the little Keitech around docks with great success right now and yesterday I caught fish with the keitech around docks, points and over brush.
Next came my meat and potatoes bait yesterday, the shaky head. I used this the most yesterday and it produced some very nice fish, first while running a stretch of deeper docks and then I started hitting the deeper, shady rock bluffs. If you’re not scoping docks, right now you just have to assume there are fish under every dock….and there could be right now. Right now, my favorite place to look for bigger fish with the worm would have to be a deep, dark shady rock bluff with a blowdown or sunken wood on the bottom. The sundrenched rock bluffs are a good option right now, but I prefer the deep, dark shady areas for bigger fish right now. Really, you can’t go wrong throwing a shaky head worm around rocks and docks right now, especially in those mid-morning hours when you’re waiting for that wind to kick up. Yesterday I caught the most fish on the shaky head.
Late yesterday morning the wind started to blow out of the SW, and it started a pretty good ripple in the creek so I noticed the wind blowing right into a couple rocking points and I wanted to see if the crankbait bite was still an option, so I picked up the cranking rod and started making bomb casts with the crankbait across points. The DT10 runs at about 10 feet in depth but most of my casts started at close to 10 feet and I don’t think I caught a fish on the crankbait yesterday while it was making contact with the bottom. I ran a long stretch of rip rap in the creek and found a couple of smaller fish willing to eat the crankbait, but I just wasn’t feeling it with the crankbait. The wind was really starting to pick up and I had another fun bait in mind, but the crankbait is definitely still in play right now. It won’t be long till we can put away the red cranks and pull out the shad pattern crankbaits. We’re going to be approaching the shad spawn very soon and a shad pattern crankbait that dives between 5-10 feet will be the ticket for some nice bass prior to, and during the shad spawn.
If it’s spring and the wind is blowing, you’d better have a spinnerbait on the deck. Yesterday in the early afternoon the wind picked up and it provided me with plenty of options for my 3/4-ounce SpotSticker Baits Mini Me. Right now, I don’t use a trailer for the bait, and it does just fine without one. It’s pretty simple with the spinnerbaits right now. Just find a wind point and start chunking it around. I like to spot lock up wind and make my casts downwind for the extra distance on the cast. I follow it up with a 10-15 count depending on the depth I’m fishing. If I’m fishing shallow, I like to keep it just above the bottom and for deeper applications like over brush, I’ll give it a 10 count just to get it down below the surface a bit. Yesterday I caught some nice ones with the spinnerbait out on windy points, but I broke it off in the top of a brushpile after success on a few points. I don’t like to use Livescope for the spinnerbait because I like the surprise I get from the fish slamming the bait unexpectedly. After I broke off the spinnerbait, I decided to pull out one of my all time spring bait favorites, but the spinnerbait on windy points is a must right now in the afternoons.
The last bait I used yesterday was the Zman Jackhammer chatterbait. Man, I gotta tell you guys, I love me some chatterbait in the spring. If nothing else, I love the way my rod unloads and reloads when they hit the chatterbait. The heck with Livescope! Give me the thrill of not knowing exactly when it’s going to happen and when it does happen, it can be extreme. Once I broke off that spinnerbait yesterday afternoon, I didn’t skip a beat and hit a rock point with wind on it. On my first cast I felt the chatterbait unload and reload, and I knew a fish had swirled on it. My very next cast produced another swirl so I knew there was interest. I worked my way down the side of the point and made casts across the point; on my 4th cast, I felt the bait totally unload and then reload, doubling over with a fighting fish on the end. That’s such a great feeling when fishing points out in the wind. Years ago when I first started using the Jackhammer, I mainly used it around docks and in the shallows in the spring but over the years I’ve broadened my usage of the chatterbait to include rocks, docks, points and random bank beating. Basically, I’ll use it anywhere, anytime the wind is blowing and it’s sunny out. One of the biggest attractions using the chatterbait is that chrome flash from the blade in the afternoon sun. That flash is a fish magnet and one of the main reasons I have success with it. Another successful area I like to use the chatterbait is the shade patches around docks in the afternoons. There’s just something about running that chatterbait through a shade patch down the side of a dock and feeling a fish slam it in the dark shadow. I finished my afternoon yesterday about 4pm and the last 2 hours were spent throwing the chatterbait in the wind and popping the occasional bass. I think the chatterbait provided the most fun for me yesterday and the wind was instrumental in my success. I used a pearl paddletail fluke jr. for a trailer on the chatterbait and it provided a great ending for my week.
Right now the lake is holding steady at just above full pool and the corps is only moving water a few hours a day. Water temps are still a little on the low side for this time of year but the lake is warming and approaching 60 degrees right now. Above are 6 baits that I use this time of year with great success on Lanier. I could rattle off another 4-5 baits that I would use in addition to these six but these are 6 of my favorites and the ones I used with success yesterday. Here’s a few more fish from my week.
This week has been an interesting one for sure. It started out this week with Lisa traveling for work, so I had to hold down the fort early on this week. Last Wednesday I started a 10 day fast for religious and health reasons. First off, my prayers for folks have gotten larger here lately and I wanted to spend more time in prayer and less time enjoying good meals. I’ve read a lot about fasting and the health benefits of fasting and I wanted to give it a try. I’ve also watched several episodes of “Naked and Afraid” on tv and it seemed to me that most of the plump, pale and pudgy ones seem to do very well, basically surviving off their own body fat for days in a state of ketosis. They just lay around the grass hut eating their own fat and make their skinny tattooed partner mad because the skinny one is doing all the work. The ones that come in skinny and don’t eat much, have issues and drop out a lot more than them chunky ones. If they can do it for 21 days naked, cold, with nothing but bugs and worms to eat while getting bitten by insects, surely, I can do it in the comfort of my home. Mainly it’s a test of my willpower and sacrifice. Well, I finished my 10 days yesterday and I feel pretty good as my only solid food over ten days was a little chicken or shrimp and fresh asparagus or soup some evenings. I had a little fruit in the mornings for a few days but most days I just had a cup of coffee and started my day. During the day I drank a can of Fresca which is basically carbonated citrus water and that would carry me through the day. I did lose weight as well as energy for sure. I dropped down to my last belt notch over the 10 days, but I do feel a bit better overall. I’m going to do another fast soon but the next time I’m going to try without the morning coffee, and we’ll see how that goes.
On another note, our new little kitten, Casper is not doing well and we’re just praying that he makes it. Lisa found the little guy abandoned in a work shed and it was very cold so Lisa thought the little newborn kitten was dead. She put the Kitten in her coat pocket and a few minutes later her pocket started moving. The mother was reunited with the kitten and nursed it along with 3 other kittens that Lisa rescued in the shed that would have surely died. We found a home for the others, and we decided to keep the little white one to give our current cat a friend be around while were away. We’re not sure what happened to little Casper, but he just started getting very lethargic and all but quit eating. The vet said he had a little fever but otherwise they could find anything. They wormed him and we left. He may have eaten something he wasn’t supposed to as we have some indoor plants or maybe it was a piece of plastic. Once before he ate a little piece of plastic, and we waited 4 days before he finally passed it. If you’re reading this, please keep little Casper in your prayers as he’s struggling right now.
Fishing started slow but turned on big time as the week progressed. This week was one of those weeks that gets better as the week progresses with the weather being stable and the bass getting into their spawning routine. There are some weeks where the fish reset and things that were working days before don’t work now. Last week I was having a ball with the crankbait but this week I didn’t catch one fish on a crankbait, and it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Monday, I didn’t fish, and Tuesday was a short day, but Lisa was back on Wednesday, so I hit the lake to put something together. The numbers were there on Wednesday, but the bigger fish were baffling me until Thursday when I started to zero in on the big girls, then it was just a matter of making the right casts to see if they were home. The shaky head was what they wanted to bite but the bite was somewhat unique, and I had to get used to it.
This week the bite with the worm was subtle to say the least. One of the most important things I mastered with the shaky head is learning to feel the bite however small it is. It just drives me crazy to fish with someone who slacklines a lot. The key to success with these big spots is to never have slack in your line because you can miss a very subtle bite from a big fish if you have slack in your line. When I’m dragging my worm on the bottom, I want to feel everything. Every little stick, rock or indifference on the bottom. I want to be able to feel when a fish slowly picks up my bait and starts swimming away. Using braid with a flourocarbon leader intensifies the feeling coming up the line and I try and visualize what the worm is doing on the bottom. On Wednesday I didn’t fish clean and lost a couple key fish by not setting the hook properly when a fish would pick up my worm and swim straight towards the boat, which was most of the time this week. Once the worm was picked up by the fish and I reeled down on the swimming fish I would forget the hookset and just keep reeling down. I lost two very nice fish to thrown hooks on Wednesday, but I figured out my error and vowed to correct that on Thursday’s trip.
Thursday I kinda knew what I was going to do, and it didn’t involve a crankbait or any other moving bait for that matter. The big fish I lost from the day earlier just happened to be out on the end of deeper dock, and basically the big female was in some form of spawn mode. You have to keep in mind that spotted bass will spawn deeper than largemouth, especially the bigger ones, and our spots can spawn just about anywhere. It could be out on the main lake humps, or it could be around an unsuspecting dock, down in 20-25 feet of water, around some small structure. These bass can be hidden from Livescope and my best hope was to just throw the worm around the deeper docks and work the worm very very slowly! I caught fish during the morning hours on Thursday, but the good bite didn’t start till early to midafternoon and that’s when I really concentrated on the deeper docks. After a few smaller fish I boated a 4.3 off a dock and figured it would be my biggest until just before the end of my deep dock run, I hit pay dirt. I threw the worm to the front corner of a 25-foot-deep dock and let the worm drop straight down. I’d made that cast a thousand times before over the years on the front corner of that dock and I knew there wasn’t any major structure in the area of my cast. Once the worm hit the bottom I started a very slow drag. It didn’t take long till I felt the worm stop like it had come into contact with something. I just held a little pressure on the worm and waited. I felt the worm move just a little. I hadn’t induced that movement, and I knew it wasn’t natural. I kept a little pressure on the line and again I felt something unnatural barely moving the worm followed by a slight tick. The tic is generally when the fish quickly sucks the bait in by opening the mouth very quickly and creating a strong quick vacuum. In the next second I figured that hooksets were free, and nobody was looking so I reeled down and laid into the suspected worm nibbler. The first thing I felt was dead weight but, in another second, I felt a big head shake and I knew I had something big. The fish stayed down and swam out to the boat like dead weight with an occasional big head shake. When the fish finally decided to come up and jump, I could see the worm lodged deep inside the roof of her mouth. She wasn’t going to shake that out and I dipped the net in the water as she shook her head, tail walking right into my waiting net. At first glance I thought it had to be a largemouth but on a second look I knew it was just a big ole spot. I said “thank the Lord and where’s my scales”!! I was shooting for a 5lber and when I hung her on the scales it immediately popped up to 6.3 which was a tie with my biggest spot to date, but the scale settled on 6.1 and I said, “I’ll take it”. It was every bit as thrilling as the 6.3 record from years ago. I put the fish in the livewell after weighing her and I sat down for a second and relaxed. I thought about running back to the house with the fish and grabbing a tape measure for a replica mount, but then I thought that the fish was probably close to spawning and I really didn’t was to drag her around for a measuring session so after a couple minutes I picked her up and took a good look, thanked the Lord again for such a great fish and I released her. She headed straight back to the dock she came from. The picture at the top was the only picture I took of her besides the picture of the scales.
Yesterday I was out with my buddy Jeff Williams, and we were doing a little worm fish. Years ago, Jeff helped me tremendously by giving me confidence in the shaky head. I took several beatdowns from Jeff using the shaky head over the past few years and every once in a while, we get together, throwing the worm to match our skills. The last time I think we tied so this time was going to be the tiebreaker with equal time on the front, nothing but a worm and no Livescope. Yesterday Jeff jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. We had a great time as usual, but the good bite didn’t really start until the last couple hours of the trip. Jeff was ahead by 3 fish, and we ran one last stretch of deeper docks which accounted for most of the bigger fish for the day. Just after 3 o’clock I made a cast into a shade patch of a deeper dock and soon after the worm hit the bottom, I felt a small tug on the worm. I reeled down and set the hook on another bigger fish. At first, I didn’t think the fish warranted the net but then Jeff got a look at her, and he immediately told me it was 5 or over. Once again, the big fish tail walked right into Jeff’s waiting net and the fight was over. I knew it was right at 5 if not over and I thanked the Lord again and weighed her at 5.2. After that we fished a bit longer but called it a day and headed back to the house. Jeff got me in numbers as usual, but I did manage the big fish of the day which finished out my week of fishing and 10 days of fasting. It was a great ending to the week and to my fasting.
The lake is a little over full pool right now and the corps is moving water a few hours today. Water temps have been on the rise all week and was somewhere around 55-57 degrees in the creek. The fish are staging and getting very close to an early wave of big spawners right now. I targeted the deeper fish that I felt were staging at the deep end of the docks and it worked pretty well for me. The most important thing for me was being able to recognize that subtle bite from the bigger fish. Here’s a few more fish pics from my week.
It was probably close to 30 years ago when I had my first taste of a crawfish pie. Prior to that first taste I was a bit skeptical of a pie that wasn’t sweet. Pie was supposed to be sweet and the thought of putting seafood in a pie was beyond me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve ate my share of chicken pot pies over the years, but I never dreamed you could use seafood in a pie. My grandmother used to make homemade minced meat pies out of leftover pot roast, but the pies she made were still a bit sweet with sugar and raisins added to the finely ground roast. Minced meat and rhubarb pies were a favorite of mine at my grandmother’s house growing up so I figured “what the heck”, might as well add a mudbug pie to the list of weird pies I’ve eaten.
My old buddy Steve Bumblis, a friend from my Navy days in San Diego as well as New Orleans introduced me to crawfish pie one evening when I was a guest at his house for dinner. He made one pie for our dinner that night, and he made one pie for me to take home. By the time I finished my second slice of crawfish pie at dinner, it left me wanting more, and the cool part was that Steve made me another one for me to enjoy at home. Steve was a good friend but passed 10 years ago and every time I have crawfish pie it reminds me of Steve and New Orleans. This recipe is in memory of an old friend.
You may want to play with the ingredients and tweak it to your liking. Some of the sizes of the ingredients I just kinda spitball these days.
Ingredients:
12-ounce bag of cleaned crawfish tails
1/2 stick of melted butter
1 cup of chopped sweet onion
1 cup of chopped green bell pepper
1 cup of chopped celery
1 tsp. Seafood Magic
1 tsp. Crab boil
1 tsp. Old Bay seasoning
3 tbsp All purpose flour
1 tbsp corn starch
1/4 cup water
1/2 cup heavy whipping cream
1/2 -1 can Cream of Mushroom soup (optional)
1 small soften diced potato (optional)
Marie Callendar deep dish pie crust
Pillsbury pie crust for the top
salt and pepper to taste
Note: If I don’t add the canned soup to the mixture, I replace it with 1/2 to 1 cup of the whipping cream.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees
I start out by melting the butter in my big nonstick pan, then adding the celery, onion and green bell pepper. I let that mixture simmer and soften for about 5 minutes then I added my crawfish tails, crab boil, seafood seasoning and Old Bay, and let everything simmer for about 5 minutes. I like to drain off any excess butter, then add my flour, stirring it into the mix. Next, I add my whipping cream and soup and simmer for 5 minutes. Lastly, I mix my corn starch with the water, and I added just a little chicken bouillon to the starch and water before mixing it well and adding to my pie filling mixture and stirring well. The corn starch mixture will help thicken the pie. Once I get it well mixed, I remove the mixture from the heat and pour it into a deep-dish pie crust of your choice. I usually used Marie Callender deep dish pie crusts and use an egg wash to brush on the top crust.
Once I put the top crust on and brush it with egg wash, I bake the pie for about 30 minutes or until the crust is turning brown. I like to serve it with red beans and rice and my southern potato salad. Here’s some pictures I took of the process.
It’s been a few years, but I probably wouldn’t have the experience and knowledge with the spoon during the winter months if not for a Friday evening on the way back down lake after a day of pre-fishing for a tournament the following morning. It was getting close to sunset, and I was passing the mouth of 6-mile creek, on my way back to Bald Ridge when I just happened to see a large flock of gulls circling and diving in a small cove in the Shady Grove area. I saw a few loons working below the gulls and I turned the boat towards the action. At the same time a center console boat was coming from the opposite direction and heading straight for the birds. We both pulled up just short of the action at the same time and we were both on the bow of the boats in no time making casts into the area. I was throwing a pearl white Sebile and immediately hooked up with a striper. At the same time, I could see the guy in the center console very near me was hooked up too, only his fish was a big spot. We both made casts again after releasing our fish and I immediately hooked up with another striper while the guy in the striper boat brought another huge bass to his boat. After seeing that, I asked the guy what he was using and he showed me a little white War Eagle spoon. I generally used my smaller spoons for vertical fishing but after seeing him bring in two 4-5lb spots casting the spoon, I tied one on and sure enough, the stripers had no interest in the spoon but the bass were crushing it.
The next morning my buddy Matt and I entered a UGA tournament and won it with just shy of 20lbs and just about every fish we weighed that day came from casting the spoon in various ditches. We had 2 fish that were over 5lbs, and the rest were decent fish also. That winter the bass were just crushing the spoon in the center of the ditches, but the bite was much better when casting the spoon, rather than working it vertically. That’s probably the best day I’ve had casting the spoon in the winter and to win a tournament with 2 five-pound studs was just icing on the cake.
This week started on Sunday afternoon after church service. About the whole time I was sitting in church I was thinking about ditch fishing and the spoon. A friend of mine asked if I would mind saving him some fish for a family meal and I told him I would. His family loves fish but he’s doesn’t fish so every once in a while, he’ll contact me and ask for some fish. I’ve got no problem saving him some fish and helping to feed a family is worth saving a few bass for table fare. He usually brings me a 12 pack of beer which I don’t drink but I take it out to the country and give the beer to a friend who does drink beer and has a private lake filled with crappie and bass, so I exchange the beer for crappie and bass fishing in his lake. It’s a good trade and I usually load the freezer with crappie and bass filets from the lake.
I knew exactly where I was going to go on Sunday afternoon after doing some scouting on Thanksgiving afternoon while giving the grandkids a joyride in the boat. We stopped in the middle of a ditch and on the first drop, the bottom came alive, and we were in business. Two of my grandkids got to reel in a bass from the ditch and then we left them biting because it was just too cold to have the kids out in the wind. That ditch was loaded with fish as it is just about every year around this time and sometimes, I just have to drop my spoon on faith because the fish are usually so stuck to the bottom, I can’t pick them up on sonar or Livescope. I’ve written about this before but when using the spoon, Livescope is helpful to locating the moving fish but the ones that are resting on the bottom are very hard to see. I just know from fishing Lanier for the past 20+ years that the fish will be there and you can just about cast your spoon in any direction, letting the spoon flutter down to the bottom and usually the fish will come alive and pull off the bottom to investigate the spoon. Sometimes they hit the spoon before it gets to the bottom and sometimes it takes a few hops on the bottom to get the fish to react. Once I get a group up and swimming around, chances are, more groups are going to start moving around, thinking something is happening. Depending on the size of the group in the ditch, it can provide fun for hours or it can only last a few minutes before the group scatters. Releasing the caught fish back into the ditch will generally shut the bite down after the third or fourth fish, so I usually keep the fish in the livewell until I get ready to leave the area or I get 5-10 in the livewell. When I release the fish, I usually idle away from the ditch before releasing my catch if I want to continue to fish the area. I don’t recommend keeping the fish in the livewell for an extended period of time unless of course, you know what you’re doing, you’re a tournament angler or a fishing guide trying to put that five bass picture together. (I always get a chuckle out of that one).
Back to Sunday afternoon. I’d like to be able to tell you that there are certain things that I look for when looking for a productive ditch, and there are but for the past week, the two most productive ditches for me were in areas that are nothing special, just flat mud bottom with very little structure. One would be classified as a ditch but the other is just basically a swing in a creek channel. In both cases there is bait, clouds of bait just drifting through the areas. Massive clouds of threadfin shad moving around, not being influenced by the wind but just kinda hanging around the area. The bass in the first ditch were everywhere on Sunday and there was some bigger fished mixed in this year. I think the average size is up this year and I think the average size bass being caught around the lake is up this year too. I probably caught close to 30 fish on Sunday afternoon and provided table fare for a friend. Think of that beer as a big bag of crappie filets for a fish fry.
I fished again on Monday for a couple hours in the warmest part of the day generally cycling through four different ditches that have produced, and I had a pretty good run. I skipped Tuesday and shot back out on Wednesday for a couple hours in the warmest part of the day. On Thursday I fished with my friend Curtis, from church, who also lives on the lake and is a pilot for Delta. He has a pretty busy schedule, but he managed to jump in the boat with me on his way back home after flying back from Denver. He said it was actually warmer in Denver than here. We got into fish right away in the early afternoon and Curtis put 2 nice fish in the boat on his first 3 casts to start us off. I think one of which may have been his pb at a little shy of 5lbs. We brought a couple doubles to the boat and fished for a couple hours, bouncing back and for between 2 ditches, before calling it a day.
Yesterday I got out again from noon till 3 or so and caught a lot of fish but I could tell that things were slowing down a bit in the ditches for the spoon bite. The fish Have been looking at the spoon all week and the size of the bass certainly decreased yesterday. The biggest key this week was the bait and matching the hatch with the 1/2-ounce War Eagle spoon. Early in the week, it was all about the white spoon but by Wednesday they really reacted to the chrome spoon much better. When I came off the water yesterday afternoon the water temp was down to 55 and dropping. It was 58 at the beginning of the week. The lake is down a little over 4 feet and dropping, exposing some pretty interesting shoreline and bass hideouts when the lake is at full pool. Here’s a few of the memorable fish from my week.
It’s finally here! October has to be my favorite month of the year, and for many reasons. Soon the leaves around the lake will turn colors as the season changes and provide a backdrop of beauty for all to behold. Major league baseball has reached the playoff season and football is just starting. Usually by October my fantasy football teams are well on their way to another losing season and I’m left scratching my head on what went wrong this year. Following college football is a family tradition in the south and if you’re not a fan of the SEC, well, bless your heart. October brings a fishing pattern to the lake that is like no other and our topwater bite on Lake Lanier, with a backdrop of crimson and gold shoreline is the perfect setting. It’s a spectacular time of year and the way things are looking it should be a banner fall for topwater around the lake.
It’s been a couple weeks since my last report but not a whole lot has changed for me. I’ve been on this topwater binge for a while now, probably since the spring. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve mixed in a couple of other patterns but topwater has been my favorite for months now. This summer was one of those summers that provided me with topwater excitement nonstop. Well almost nonstop. I had to stop for my latest knee replacement. That sidelined me for a month or so, but the new knee has finally settled in and as a result, there is much less pain than before the replacement. I just finished my physical therapy and hopefully this old body holds together without another joint issue for a while, or at least until the lake turns over and topwater is minimal till next spring.
In my last report, I was all in on the Riser topwater bait and I learned a lot using it for the first time this year. It’s a very effective bait this time of year because the fish are feeding heavily on the balls of threadfin shad drifting all over the lake and especially in the front half of the creeks right now. This is the time of year that the bait starts making that trek to the creeks where they will spend their winter, making their way to the backs of the creeks where the water may be just a bit warmer. The threadfin shad are small, most in the 1-2 size and the little riser isn’t much bigger than that, plus it creates a wake which is what the bass are looking for on the surface. Bass like to track down the source of a wake, thinking it’s probably a blueback on the surface. The riser also works well when there isn’t a whole lot of wind and the clear riser really works during those times and for pressured fish.
This week the Ima ko ruled the week for the biggest fish. I probably missed about 90% of the fish that actually blew up on it, but I did connect with a few. Most of the time I had to keep the Ima moving at a pretty good pace to get the bites and not give the fish a good look at it but there were also a few times that the fish reacted to the bait when it was dead sticked. Dead sticking wasn’t exactly the pattern I was using but sometimes I would kill the bait about halfway back to the boat and wait about 10-20 seconds, especially if I had fish swimming underneath it on the retrieve and every once in a while, a fish would come up and grab it. I think it was probably the flash from the shiny chrome that would trigger the bite while dead sticking. The Ima worked best in a medium chop over brush this week but if the chop got smaller, I would put the Ima down and pick up the clear riser. It seemed like the fish preferred the riser over the Ima in lite chop and that clear bait had them baffled at times. I had two fish that were 4lbs or over today and both came from a hump this afternoon with the clear riser. It’s been a good choice for me. If it got flat and the fish were on the bottom, I’d throw the shaky head, especially on the crown of the humps or around the brush.
Another bait I used for success this week was the spinnerbait. In the mornings there wasn’t much of a solid topwater bite for me but hitting the points with some wind and chop on them was the perfect place for the 3/4-ounce SpotSticker Mini Me pictured below. That little bait was my answer to stubborn topwater fish in the morning. Below is pics my best baits this week.
I’d like to write more but that’s about all I have time for this week. It was a fun week, and the recent rains has brought the water level up to less than a foot below full pool which is about a 3-foot jump in the last 10 days. Water temps are fluctuating from the mid to upper 70’s and the corps is generating a few hours in the evenings. It won’t be long till the leaves turn colors and the topwater peaks for the fall. Here are a few of my memorable fish this week.
The temperatures were mild this week and while I was out fishing, I could just feel autumn in the air with every gust of wind. At times this week I would get a quick whiff of that autumn air, and the faint smell of memories long past would resurface in my mind, memories of fishing that haven’t been long forgotten. I remembered my time out west at the San Luis reservoir in early fall, camping, catching stripers out of an old Bass Tracker and the smell of our smoldering campfire on a chilly autumn morning. There was the marsh in Louisiana in the early fall and catching specked trout by the dozens as they made their way back into the maze of canals, surrounding the end of the line for the mighty Mississippi. A popping cork, a jig head and a pound of fresh shrimp is all you needed for a fish fry Cajun style. If you got 2lbs of fresh shrimp, you could take one pound back home to have with your fried trout dinner. I remember walking out onto the big wood deck at our fish camp and watching the sunrise over the Louisiana marsh with my first cup of coffee early in the morning. I remember cool fall mornings more recently, running and gunning topwater stripers on Lake Lanier with Lisa and having a blast watching the fish blow up on Lisa’s bait. It was a good week for looking back at autumn memories and making a few more.
If I had to rate my week of fishing, this week I’d have to give it about 3 and a half stars. It had its ups and downs, at times it was a challenge, but I still found a few fish in the process. This week I was torn between topwater and the spinnerbait bite. What made it even worse was that you had to lead with one or the other when approaching a location and I couldn’t get a lot of success with using both. If I used the topwater for a few casts to start with, they wouldn’t react to a subsequent spinnerbait offering. If I started with the spinnerbait, they wouldn’t touch a subsequent topwater bait. It was either one or the other, and generally speaking, it was usually the first offering that had the most success. Both baits gave me a thrill, so it wasn’t hard to choose one or the other. The biggest problem I had this week was bait supply due to some unforeseen breakoffs which I don’t normally deal with. With each breakoff, the lure is usually gone, and I was down to bare bones this week with my riser, Ima and spinnerbait supply. I don’t think the breakoffs was a problem with line, but it was a problem with the user not changing out leaders and a few feet of braid periodically. I’m making a lot of casts in a days’ time and that first 10-15 feet of line gets the worst eyelet rub and wears out faster. The fluorocarbon leader gets nicks and abrasions from time and also needs to be replaced often. The problem is that sometimes I’m a procrastinator and I tend to blow these things off until I break off a 4+ pound fish and then I decide to freshen my line.
There were 3 baits on my deck this week and thanks to my buddy Jeff Nail returning from the farm, I got a re-stock on the water mid-week. The mid-week restock of risers and Ima ko’s from Lip Thrashin Lures were pretty instrumental in my topwater endeavors. That little chrome riser has been deadly for me and for good reason. A lot of the bass are chasing threadfin in the creek right now and the smaller baits tend to rule. Don’t get me wrong, the bigger baits have been producing some giant fish, especially the fish that are feeding on herring. I’ve caught some bass this week that harked up some big herring so either bait size can be successful. The cool part about Chuck Trasher’s little chrome Riser bait is that it tends to mimic a small threadfin on the surface, and it moves fast enough on the retrieve to cause a reaction strike around these wolfpacks of bass. The key to the riser retrieve is to go fast enough to keep it on the surface, but slow enough to maintain the waggling action of the bait caused by the blade on the front. Keep in mind that the heavier you go with your leader, the less action the bait will have. I used a Tatsu 10lb flouro leader and that size still gave the bait decent action although I wouldn’t recommend going any higher. Long casts are also key to using this bait. A bass or group of bass may follow the bait for 100+ feet before deciding to react to it. The longer the bait is in the water, the better chance you have of finding a fish or a fish finding your bait. I started with the little chrome riser on Monday, but I lost the last one I had to a breakoff. I dug around in the boat and found a clear riser, which I had never used before, I had only used chrome up to this point, but I tied it on and went to work. Here’s a picture of the clear riser I was using.
The clear riser picked up right where the little chrome riser left off and I was back in business catching bass over brush and on points. It was short lived though as the new clear riser broke off early in the morning on Tuesday. I was out of risers.
Another bait that has been a lot of fun for me this week is the Mini Me spinnerbait. I had 3 spinnerbaits in the boat last week and I was down to 1 this week. My favorite is the 3/4 ounce in the shad pattern pictured below but I only used the 1/2 ounce this week. I guess the moral of the story is that either will work because I caught fish with both. The only difference was the sink rate, so I gave the 1/2 ounce a 15 count, vice the 10 count I’ve been giving the 3/4 ounce.
I’m a sucker for that topwater bite but I gotta admit that the spinnerbait bite for me is a very close second to the topwater explosions in the fall. There were times this week that I put the topwater rod down and just threw the spinnerbait. Almost every time I picked it up this week, I found success. I got to the point of using the FFS to locate this fish but then I’d turn the transducer away from the fish and make my cast. I really liked the surprise of the rod loading up with a big bass on the spinnerbait and not using FFS added to the surprise. I caught fish every day I was out this week on Ryan Coleman’s SpotSticker Mini Me and it’s always been my “go to” spinnerbait in the spring and fall, especially with these windy days. You gotta be throwing a spinnerbait on windy days, that’s all there is to it! Same areas that I’m throwing the topwater produced with the spinnerbait, over brush. One exception is that I caught some fish up shallow on the spinnerbait this week as there is a growing population of shallower fish to target, especially early in the mornings. For me this week the topwater didn’t really get good till the day progressed and the spinnerbait was a good bait to use early before the topwater started. The little Mini Me came in a close second to the riser this week in terms of fish and excitement and I really don’t know which thrilled me the most, the feel of a fish slamming the spinnerbait and the rod suddenly doubling over or watching the surface explode engulfing the little riser.
The third bait I used this week was for the herring eaters and it was another one of Chuck Thrasher’s Lip Thrashin creations, the chrome Ima Skimmer knock off. When I ran out of risers, I picked up my Ima ko and went threw it around. The best retrieve I found for the Ima was fast, just like the name says, Skimmer. I was skimming it and killing it on the surface and forcing the fish to chase it down and killing it sometimes triggered the reaction. It worked well, especially in the wind this week and some of the blowups I got were incredible. Jeff Nail and I were out on the 11th, and we found a school of bass and stripers that were mixed in and I used the Ima ko for both bass and stripers. On one cast I’d bring in a striper and a bass on the very next cast. The Ima ko was a great backup bait for my lack of riser’s this week. Here’s a picture of my favorite Ima.
I gotta thank Jeff Nail for my “on the water” re-stock this week and Chuck Thrasher for a big restock for following weeks. I also gotta thank Ryan Coleman and SpotSticker baits for the awesome spinnerbaits and keeping me going throwing them in the spring and fall!
Water temps have broken into the mid to upper 70’s now and after this stint of bad weather passes, we should be in for more great autumn fishing next week. The lake is over 3 feet down and still falling. We desperately need some rain, mainly because I don’t want to move my dock again. The best 3 baits this week was the Riser, the Mini Me and the Ima ko in that order. You can find these at Lip Thrashin Lures and SpotSticker Baits. Here’s a few of my memorable fish from the week.
Cast Away's Blog 