When I saw this picture all those memories I had as a child came flooding back to me and I had to say something about this man. The man who brought me into this world.
When I was a young kid growing up, I developed very bad allergies. I couldn’t eat normal food and was restricted to nothing but rice and a few other foods. I was allergic to things like flour, corn, dairy products, plants, animals and a whole host of other things. If I would have an allergic reaction, it was pretty bad. My lungs would immediately fill with fluid and sometimes I would pass out as a result. For a little kid to experience this day after day, it wasn’t the kind of childhood someone would want. I had to take shots every week and it was hard to find things that I could eat without a reaction. As a result of the allergies, my lungs were always congested and at times I really struggled to breath. I developed pneumonia a few times and one time I had to spend days in the hospital under an oxygen tent for double pneumonia. There were times when I could barely breath and struggled to draw a breath because of the asthma caused by the allergies. This continued for years until I grew out of most of the allergies.
Our little town had a doctor by the name of Wesley Hall, and he was my hometown hero because when I got sick, Dr. Hall would come out to our little house, day or night and get us fixed up. I’ll never forget that face standing over me a looking down at me with a smile and a diagnosis. Just the mere fact that he was in my presence made me feel better. I don’t know how many times doctor Hall got me patched up when I was a kid, but I can say that had it not been for this man as my doctor I don’t think I would have seen my 18th birthday. He truly had healing hands.
My dad was one of my biggest heroes in life, and he taught me a lot, but to be perfectly honest, because of those healing hands, Dr Hall was actually my biggest hero. I know Doctor Hall is in heaven now and what a glorious time for him. When I get there, he’s one of the first people I’m going to hug.
RIP Doctor Hall, you were a Hometown hero to a lot of us kids growing up.
This one is probably a little fattening but that’s what holidays are for. I combined my midwestern chocolate delight recipe with a southern banana cream pudding recipe to make “Choclanana Delight”. I’ve always like bananas and chocolate so why not get them together. Enjoy!
Ingredients:
1 box of Betty Crocker Pie Crust mix or make a graham cracker crust if you would like
1 cup powdered sugar
1 8-ounce package of cream cheese softened
2 8-ounce tubs of Cool Whip
1 large box of instant chocolate pudding
2 small boxes of banana cream pudding
5 cups milk
Prepare the pie crust using the whole box of pie crust mix and using 4 tbls of cool water and 4 tsps of cool water. Mix thoroughly and create a ball of dough. I used a lot of flour to keep it from sticking to the counter, but I roll it out on a thin bed of flour and flour on my rolling pin. Once I’ve rolled it out I place it in my greased 9X13 baking dish, and a little granulated sugar on top and bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes.
Once the crust cools, I mix my first layer of 1 cup powdered sugar, 8 ounces of softened cream cheese and 8 ounces of Cool Whip.
Mix the large box of chocolate pudding with 2 and a half cups of milk and I add a few small chocolate chips to the mixture before spreading it.
Spread chocolate mixture on top of cream cheese mixture and then mix the banana cream pudding using 2 and a half cups of milk.
Spread pudding mixture and spread on top of chocolate mixture and top with sliced bananas.
After the bananas slices are added, top the whole dish with 8 ounces of Cool Whip and garnish with a few more miniature chocolate chips, cover and chill. Serve chilled and enjoy!!
It’s been over 12 years since Lisa, and I found a little piece of lake property for sale during a time when the lake level was down more than 10 feet and the dock for the property was sitting on dry land. There were some young renters that were occupying the small doublewide trailer, and the dwelling was in pretty bad shape. Still, it was lake property and something both Lisa and I had dreamed of owning one day. The property had been on the market for a while, and it was getting ready to drop off the listing again. The seller had come down on the price, but he had no takers. I didn’t really want to make the investment, but Lisa really thought it would be worth it one day. We made an offer on the property and it was accepted by the seller.
Once we took ownership of the property we went to work with a total remodel and replaced the old dock as well as installing rip rap at the water’s edge. In that same time frame the rains came and the lake filled to full pool, and we had plenty of water in our little cove to float the dock. Since that time, which was more than 10 years ago, our dock hasn’t seen dry land once. Lisa and I spent 6-7 years using the little lake house as a weekender for us, friends and family members. Some reading this may have stayed in our little lake house we appropriately named Cast Away Cove because of my tackle business (Cast Away Bait and Tackle) and the little cove the property was on. Here are some pictures of Cast Away Cove from years ago.
We had always wondered if we could build on the property and the prospect of building a new home was always something in the back of our minds. Around 2016 we started investigating the possibility of building a new home on the property, but we ran into a big roadblock that concerned the installation of a new and larger septic system. In order to expand a septic system, you need to have a certain amount of undisturbed soil and on the side of a hill you are required to have a holding type tank and pumping system. When we had the soil tests done, we didn’t have the room and there were too many large rocks to put in a larger septic system.
At that point we decided to sell the property and purchase a permanent existing lake home, but the market was tough, and it was hard to invest our money into something that was already 20 years old. We placed the lake house on the market, but we had no takers and eventually took it back off the market when a tree fell on our dock during hurricane Irma. We had the dock repaired and just before we were going to place it back on the market an area very near our property was developed and some townhomes were built just a few hundred yards from our lake house. Lisa and I did some investigating and found out the townhomes were located inside the city limits, but our house was in the county. It was a long shot, but we were hoping there were city sewer lines near our house from the construction of the townhomes and we could somehow tap into the city sewer even though we were in the county. Originally, we had been told through hearsay that it couldn’t be done because it was commercial type sewer system. We wanted to find out for ourselves, so we set up a meeting with the Cumming City Utility Dept. and pleaded our case. They were very understanding and there was actually a sewer line very near our road and it was just a matter of running the sewer line down our street and we, as well as our neighbors could hook up to city sewer. It was like a dream come true when the guys at the city utility department said that we could build the biggest house we wanted, and they would provide the sewer services to our property!!
Next was finding a house plan and Lisa and I looked at a bunch but settled on a plan we both agreed to. We both scanned design after design on a website called Architectual Designs. They had hundreds of designs and we settled on one after weeks of looking and looking and looking. Turns out that the architect (Garrell and Associates) for the plan we finally agreed on lives near the lake, and we were able to modify the plan to fit our property. Once we settled on a plan it was time for a builder. We found Coal Mountain Builders were local folks and we liked the custom homes they had built in the past on the lake, so we signed the building contract and scheduled the build. We broke ground in the early spring of 2018, and we were in our new home by Christmas. Here’s pictures of the tear down of the old and subsequent build of the new Cast Away Cove lake house.
That’s the question I asked myself over and over again this week. I found myself wanting to go to the deep ditches where I could spend hours just casting or bouncing a spoon around because the fish are there in big numbers and I could catch a bunch.
This week I started out practicing my jig skills in the back of some pockets early in the morning and if there’s one thing I’m lacking when it comes to fishing, it’s confidence with the jig. I can never seem to get on a roll with the jig although it’s a winter staple on Lanier. I just choose other baits to use during the winter months but this winter I’ve made myself use the jig more. Early Monday morning, I was all about the jig in the shallow pockets in the back of a ditch in the creek. As I moved up shallow in the center of the ditch, I started marking fish suspended and moving around at the 20-25-foot depth, so I started making casts towards the shallow back of the ditch and letting the 1/2 jig slowly sink to the bottom. After I feel the jig make contact with the bottom, I like to lower my rod tip and slowly drag the jig along the bottom in a stop and go motion back to the boat, always making contact with the bottom. The cool part about the jig is that when a bass hits the jig there is a pretty distinct thump and it’s your que to set the hook. I got on a roll with the jig early and managed a few confidence builders early in the morning in the very back of ditch pockets.
Monday afternoon I picked up my neighbor for a few hours and we looked for a few shaky head fish in the creek. It was kinda slow, but we managed a few. My neighbor David is working on his shaky head technique, and I always enjoy my time with David as we always talk about the bible and being better Christians. David and wife Ann both teach Bible study and are accomplished Christian writers and just a joy to have as friends and neighbors. Here’s David and his afternoon fish.
On Tuesday I was back out for the afternoon run again and I had a plan. My plan was to run 2 long stretches of docks with the shaky head, one in the shade and one in the sun to see if there was a distinct difference. I started on the deeper shady docks and by the time I had finished running at least a dozen docks in the shady stretch I had amassed a smaller 5 fish limit. The 5 fish were mainly caught between the docks up shallow or on the spud poles. The thing about spud poles this time of year is that they hold heat in the sun, and fish will suspend near the pole, usually chasing anything that moves near the pole. If I see a spud pole, it always gets a cast. Some of the docks were deep with big chunk rock or flat slopping rock shelves which usually produces a fish or two. It was a good dock run.
I then moved to the sunning docks that were just a bit shallower on average and this dock stretch had less rocky stuff. It had a flat out in front of a stretch of 3-4 docks and the flat was in the sun. Bass were always patrolling the flat in the sunny afternoons and I generally expected to always catch a fish on the flat. At the end of my run, I had 4 more fish and missed what would have been my 5th to a slow hookset. That’s the thing about the shaky head, you gotta be on your game because every once in a while, a fish will hit the worm on the way doing to the bottom and you’d never know it if you have a lot of slack in your line. If that’s the case, sometimes the fish will suck the worm in and eventually spit it back out, undetected. I almost always control my drop with the shaky head. I quit fishing after running the sunny stretch of docks and as I was leaving to head back to the house, I noticed a 3/4 moon was rising in the east as the sun was setting in the west. I had a good evening and I remembered what an old wise fisherman told me one time, “when the sun and the moon are in the sky at the same time, the fish bite the best“. Over the years I’ve come to the conclusion that there may be something to that observation from my old friend. Here’s some pics from Tuesday.
On Wednesday I decided to fish the morning hours to see if I could find a few larger fish, so I started out on the docks again but the fish either weren’t there or weren’t active. After an hour of running docks, I shifted my attention to the sunny, windy points and rocky areas that had wind and waves blowing across them. It was mid-morning and the sunny points facing the south with wind was the ticket with the shaky head. The bigger fish were up, and cruising and I slowly amassed a good sack on the rocks. I was back at the house by lunchtime and considered the morning bite much more productive for size. Here’s a few pics from the morning bite on Wednesday. The biggest was very close to 5lbs and I caught that one on a shallow south facing flat.
On Thursday things started changing and we were facing clouds and no wind to speak of. The fish that had been coming up shallow in the sun and wind were not coming up shallow and I had to head back out to the ditches for my bites. I spent a few hours out from mid-morning till early afternoon and found my fish either very deep or very shallow, but the big girls just weren’t out cruising like they had been doing in the sun. I did manage to catch a few on a pearl Magic Swimmer when I saw fish chasing a bait on the surface but all in all it was just a bunch of staring at the graph and dropping the spoon deep for 2lbers. It was kinda fun because I would drop straight down on empty bottom and start slowly going up and down about 10-20 feet and eventually, I would draw a crowd. The crowd would chase the bait up and down until one lone cowboy would say ‘I’m your huckleberry bass” and my rod would load up. I gotta brag on my Humminbird units. Whether I was fishing in 50 feet of water or looking for a certain contour on my mapping to find my shallow fish, I couldn’t have had success this week without them. They were key whether it was sonar or mapping.
Probably the highlight of my afternoon was seeing a striper work its way back into a pocket I was fishing. I watched the striper chase bait on the surface in the shallows and I couldn’t resist putting a stalk on the goofy striper just all carefree and focused. It reminded me of red fishing in the marsh and sight fishing a red in some backwater pool in the evening. The water was gin clear, but the striper is very curious and aggressive so my bait of choice that almost always fools the striper is the white pearl magic swimmer 125. It’s almost always a lock and when I saw my opportunity to make a cast to the striper, I made it count and the fight was on. Lots of fun and a great way to end my afternoon.
Friday, (yesterday) I was back out in the morning and it was kinda overcast with patchy sunshine here and there but no wind again. I didn’t have a long time to fish but I was able to find a few nice shallow fish and a few deep fish. It seemed like as the morning progressed into afternoon, and the temps got up into the 60’s the shallow fish responded, but I mainly caught smaller fish up shallow. It seemed like the bigger fish were reluctant to come up shallow at first but just when I thought it was going to be a smaller fish afternoon, I hooked a giant in a few feet of water, and she just went to jumping and shaking her head on the way to the boat. She was working the heck out of that single hook in her mouth and on a last-ditch pile drive the hook pulled at the side of the boat and she disappeared into the depths. That’s how my week ended this week and I’m still a little bummed, but I did manage a few decent fish to end the week. Right now, I’m pretty stuck on running banks and docks with the worm although the numbers aren’t quite what they would be if I were out in the ditches, but I always end up asking myself, “how many do you need”? Here were the last of the fish to end my week so I can’t really complain about the ending. I had Mac Deisel, mini mac and broke back mac.
This has been one of my favorites for years. Sometimes I substitute chicken or shrimp for beef. Be sure and adjust the ingredient amounts or ingredients to your liking.
Ingredients:
1 pound of cooked ground beef (drained)/or cooked chicken
10 flour tortillas
8 ounces of shredded cheddar cheese
8 ounces of Mexican cheese
1-2 cans of green enchilada sauce
1 can of Rotel diced tomatoes, lime juice and cilantro
1/2 cup chopped onion
8 ounces Philadelphia cream cheese
1 small can sliced or chopped black olives
Brown hamburger and add chopped onion
In large mixing bowl add drained Rotel
I add 6 ounces of shredded cheese to the mix
I usually just add a couple tablespoons of the green sauce to the mix for flavor
I add a swipe of cream cheese to each tortilla
Add a generous scoop of mix, roll and place in 9×13 baking pan or dish. I usually spray the pan with Pam
Add the remainder of the sauce and top with 8 ounces of cheddar cheese
Add olives to the top
I cover the dish and bake at 375 for 30 minutes and then uncovered for 15 minutes longer before serving
I top mine with sour cream, a little hot queso and serve with a side of refried beans top with the remainder of the Mexican shredded cheese. Enjoy!!
This week was pretty typical for an early winter warming trend, and I played it perfectly. The west wind we saw all week followed by very warm temps brought some good fish to the bank. This time of year, a small population of bass will migrate to the shore for one of two reasons: first being rises in the water level will put fish on the bank in search of a meal in new submerged shoreline and the second reason they come to the bank is for the warmth of the sun.
When the water cools these fish have a metabolism that slows as their body temperature drops. The fish is much more lethargic and not very aggressive when it comes to eating and they tend to take on a paler coloration in the deeper water. These fish tend to stay in the comfort of the deep ditch and gorge on the massive schools of bait that seek the same comfort of the depth of the ditch. They spend all day chowing down on the schools bluebacks with a high fat and adequate protein diet with little exercise because of that slower metabolism, these bass are my “Keto Bass” of Lake Lanier.
This week I found a massive school of bass in the creek, just chilling on a 40-50 creek channel bottom. These fish were in 5-10 fish wolfpacks and were just lying on the bottom for the most part. When clouds of bluebacks would drift by the fish would feed on the school and then go right back down to the bottom. Some of the wolfpacks were moving around looking for bait and some were just lying on the bottom in wait. On Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I had my way with these fish and boated a bunch of the deeper bass. Most of the bass were in the 1-3lb range and pulling them out of the depths with my little chrome or white spoon did the trick either casting or dropping the spoon vertically. Each day I was fishing the area I could tell the population of both bass and bait was dwindling and each day the temps were getting warmer. I figured that the bait and the fish were migrating as the temps got warmer. When Thursday morning came, and I went to my little deep water honey hole only to find the hole had been compromised by a boat that had passed through and seen me the day before. It was bound to happen eventually, but it was fun while it lasted. I did make a little video of some of the spooning technique I was using for the Keto Bass.
The cool part about the compromised location is that it got me to thinking about an alternate plan and it didn’t take me long to figure out that the west wind that was kicking up, outside air temps approaching 70 degrees with abundant sunshine meant the meat-eaters would be out on the rocks. The meat-eaters are the fish that seek the warmth of the sun to boost their metabolism into predator bass in search of the steak and lobster diet up on the rocks. These bass are revved up and looking to eat the crawfish that are out in the sun and going through their spawning rituals. They are also looking for bream and gizzard shad to add to their foraging diet. These fish are much stronger than the lethargic keto bass and these bass tend to take on darker, richer colorations in the warmer water. I chose to spend the rest of my Thursday pursuing the Meat-eater bass up on the sunny wind-blown rocky areas.
There are 2 baits I use on the windy rocky banks and that’s a crankbait or a worm. There are an assortment of crankbaits that will work as these meat-eater bass are up on the rocks for one reason and that is to eat just about anything that moves. Crankbaits rattle and the crawfish clicks and rattles when they spawn so the crankbait on the rocks is a no brainer, especially when the wind blows.
When it comes to worms, I prefer the shaky head worms, but I’ve also had tremendous luck using Texas rigged worms also. On Thursday I chose the shaky head as I’ve got more confidence in the bait plus I just love to feel the bite when it comes to the shaky head. In just about every instance, I can expect to catch larger fish when targeting the areas where the meat-eaters show up.
About lunchtime on Thursday the wind was blowing at a pretty good clip so I started pounding the wind-blown rocks with the worm using spot-lock and my fan casting method. On my second cast up into less that 3 feet of water this bass pictured below just smoked my worm and the fight was on. I knew that it was going to be a good afternoon for the worm when I got this fish to the boat. A true meat-eater.
After This fish it was just a matter of bouncing from rocky area to rocky area and I even found a bonus of larger fish hanging around the docks so I was able to whack a few more very nice fish with the shaky head on deeper docks as well as sunny shallow docks. I ended my week Thursday and it was definitely a fun week of Keto and Meat-eaters. Water temps are in the mid to upper 50’s right now and the lake is down about a foot and a half. The corps is generating off and on and the lake level is slowly falling. Here are a few of my memorable fish from the week.
I haven’t told many people this over the years but way back when I used to run the marsh in Louisiana I was always learning. I was always trying to better understand the feeding habits of the redfish in the marsh so I could be more successful. One of the most important factors to being successful in the marsh is finding the fish and sometimes it can be a chore in the vast open marsh. Observations were very important to me and one observation I made after a few years is that groups of feeding fish poop a lot when they are feeding, and the redfish was no different. On a few occasions when I had found redfish in an area feeding on mullet, I also found the presence of what looked to be small floating dog turds in the same areas I was catching a lot of fish, so I started examining the floating oddities and sure enough they in fact were fish turds. I finally cracked the code on locating redfish; just look for the presence of turds. Of course, that’s not always possible if the wind is blowing or the tide is moving very swiftly but, on a few occasions, when the wind is calm and there are a lot of hidden fish in an area, you can’t hide the turds.
Ok, you’re probably wondering where I’m going with this, so I’ll get to the point. Yesterday when I was making my rounds in the creek checking ditches, I pulled into one ditch and around 45-50 feet in ditch depth I saw a massive school of bluebacks that were thick from 20 feet all the way down to the bottom. Another observation I made and it’s not the first time I’ve made this observation, is the presence of these small floating splotches of discolored bubbles about the size of pancakes above the middle of the ditch. Shortly thereafter I started marking a steady stream of fish moving about the bottom but not interested in feeding. I knew right away what was going on; these were stripers that had just got done feeding on that massive school of bluebacks and they were just chilling in the pocket. The pancake splotches on the surface are something I see often in the areas where large schools of stripers are or have been feeding and there is no wind to break up the flotilla of liquid poop. I took a snapshot of the stripers chilling on the bottom while I was banging my spoon all over these fish and they had no interest in eating at that point. They were just chilling on the bottom near the massive cloud of bluebacks. This isn’t the first time I’ve found this phenomenon and since I first observed it, I’m seeing it more and more over the course of the past few years. If anything, it’s just another tool to help find these fish and sometimes you really need to get outside the box to do some thinking. Next time you’re out, keep in mind that there could be the presence of poop, and where there’s poop, there are probably going to be some fat stripers just chilling on the bottom after a delicious meal of bluebacks.
Around 15-16 years ago a friend and I were fishing a big striper tournament up at Lake Cherokee in northern Tennessee. It was the end of the year Gold Cup Championship and there were 50 of the best striper teams in the south competing for the Gold Cup. Lake Cherokee had a striper kill just before the tournament and about the only stripers left in the lake were below 5lbs. There were also hybrids in the lake that were not affected by the striper kill so a hybrid was probably a bigger and better choice than a striped bass and hybrids were legal to weigh for the tournament. My partner and I fished all day and had a 2 fish striper limit of 6-7lb which would have put us at about a mid-pack finish and time had run out for us. We had just enough time to get back to the ramp, trailer and run 10 minutes to the park where the weigh-in was held. It was over for us and after 4 days of pre-fishing and countless hours of prep we were going to the weigh-in to watch others win some nice new striper boats and collect those checks after a long season.
As we were hurrying to load gear and get to the ramp a small school of hybrids started blowing up within 20-30 yards of the boat. We both were watching and shaking our heads as we put away the last of the rods. My buddy and I just laughed and said: “just our luck”. The action grew and more hybrids joined the schooling so my buddy and I decided to grab our spoon rods and cast into the schooling hybrids in a last second attempt to upgrade our fish. We both made a cast into the schooling action and immediately hooked up with big hybrids. After a short fight we both got our upgrades in and made it to the weigh-in just in time to weigh 2 big hybrids for 14lbs and received a big fat 4th place check. We actually got to sit in a nice new striper boat on stage in first place for most of the weigh in and it was awesome. Had it not been for those little flex-it spoons and perfect timing, we would have been watching someone else up on that stage.
More recently my friend Matt and I won a UGA tournament on Lanier just a few years back and we had a nice sack of 20lbs including a 5.12 and a 5.1 and all were caught casting a spoon. It’s that time of year for me. It’s not only the spoon bite for me but I’ve got a couple of other options that I’ll utilize from now till the early spring.
This week started out with my usual November pattern which consists of a lot of shaky head and ned rigging on rocks and docks. On Monday I was beating the rocks and docks with the shaky head and running across a few nice fish doing that. I call the fish on the rocks “the Meat Eaters” because they are in search of that large high protein meal instead of out in the depths gorging on a menu of small bluebacks and threadfins. One observation I’ve noticed from the week is that the bulk of the creek is turning over so the bait and fish are in locations to avoid the turnover areas. The biggest key right now is to find the bait. That’s where the fish are going to be. Whether it’s the back of a pocket, shallow or deep, find the bait and find the fish. There are fish that have chosen to beat the turnover by hanging out on the shallow rocks and that was Monday’s target area, shallow rocks and rock bluffs in the creek and out on the main lake and my bait was the shaky head. Here are a couple of nice fish from Monday using the worm on the sunny south facing rocks in the afternoon. These are the meat eaters.
Those bigger fish on the rocks and docks are few and far between but a lot of fun if you have the patience and your satisfied with a few big fish instead of a bunch of 1-2lbers. My suggestion is to use a bigger worm on your shaky head. A magnum trick worm in a darker color like green pumpkin is a good choice to start with but sometimes a smaller work like a finesse worm is what the fish are looking for but use your own imagination and find a worm/jig head you can build some confidence in.
On Tuesday I was running a stretch of rock bluff where a creek channel ran against the bluff. Bait was moving through the area in clouds and balls which is usually a combination of shad and bluebacks. On your graph, a school of bluebacks will look like a long random cloud and the threadfins will look more like a ball of bait, whether it’s a big ball or small ball it’s probably threadfin shad. Not long after seeing the first school of bait I started seeing fish around the bait so I picked up the spoon and it was pandemonium for the next few hours. It was just a matter of dropping the spoon down anywhere around a bait school as they drifted by and a bass was going to eat your spoon. It was that simple and I caught a fish on just about every drop. Most of the fish were cookie cutter 2lbers but every once in a while, a bigger fish would come to the boat. There were a few largemouth mixed in and I could tell that these fish were putting on the feed bag with the bait. Some of the fish I caught would be barfing up shad in and around the boat so I knew the bulk of the bait was shad. I’m not sure how many fish I caught but only one was big enough to need fizzing for the release, all of the others swam away just fine after less than an hour in the livewell. I was able to take some pictures of my afternoon fun.
On Wednesday I was back out in the early afternoon and I was checking other areas, trying to find that same scenario with the bait and the deeper water. A few years back I found a big flat spot on the creek channel, across from a point and for some reason stripers, bass and bait show up there every year. It is void of any structure whatsoever and there is very little reason for the fish to be there but they are. I can pull into the area and see nothing but clean flat mud bottom but as soon as I drop the silver War Eagle spoon down the whole bottom will light up with fish within minutes. That’s the beauty of the chrome War Eagle spoon on sunny days, you just drop it down to the bottom and back up a few times and that flashing from the spoon spinning is like a fish call, they all want to know what is flashing and they start gathering around the spoon. As soon as I pulled up, I saw a long cloud of bait, dropped the spoon down to the 45-foot bottom and lifted it, I felt the little tap as the rod unloaded and I was reeling in my first fish of the fall in my secret winter honey hole. I spent the next hour or so moving around and pulling up fish after fish only this time, since the bottom was flat and void of any structure, I started casting the spoon and letting it fall with long pulls and drops. Basically, I cast the spoon just as far as I can and give it a 5-10 count before giving the spoon a long pull and letting it freefall but keeping the slack out of your line. Usually if there is a fish around they will hit it while freefalling and you need to be able to feel the strike when they hit it. For that reason and others I always keep the slack out of my line while spooning. Here’s some pictures from my Wednesday at the honey hole.
On Thursday it was a maintenance day and I worked in the shop all day making baits for some upcoming stuff.
Yesterday, Friday, I went back to the honey holes and both spots were void of both fish and bait. I think the front that passed through on Thursday had moved the bait and I just couldn’t find fish nor bait in the area so I went back to my old trust shaky head on the rocks and docks with some success including my last fish of the week pictured below off a spud pole. Be sure and check those spud poles folks, they hold heat and fish.
If you’re still reading this report and haven’t bailed by now, good for you and you get a special treat for hanging with me. Here’s another little piece of advice that has definitely helped fill my late fall and early winters with excitement and that’s watching the loon’s work with my spoon in hand. Soon the loons with be migrating to lake Lanier where they will spend their winter months gorging on Lanier’s abundant bait supply. The fish love the presence of the loons because it also helps the fish when it comes to feeding time. The loons work together very well to coral bait into balls and then run through the bait eating as they go. Bait will be scattering and skittering everywhere to avoid the loons and the carnage starts to cause a scene as bass and stripers show up if they are in the area. There are also opportunists in the air in the form of gulls’ dive bombing the surface to scam their fair share. It’s a frenzy from above and below and the fish start making runs at the bait from below and it’s all a blast if you can get close enough to make a cast or two with that little silver War Eagle spoon. The loons are pretty smart and can tell the difference between a spoon and a bai fish but I still try to avoid casting right into where loons are working, instead, casting to the outer fringes and letting the spoon freefall just like a wounded or dying bait. Chances are, if there are fish in the area you’re in for a treat and if they are bigger stripers, you’re in for a real treat. That’s all for this week so keep those spoons handy and watch that graph for bait!
I did a little something different today and went out to a new lake called Black Shoals, down south outside of Loganville. A friend had just built a house on the lake and invited me out to check out the house and jump in his Pond Prowler for a little fishing plus a little of my insight on fishing the lake. He is just starting out fishing the lake and also fishing in general so we set out today in the windy white caps cutting across the lake in the Pond Prowler…
It was absolute post front conditions today and the wind was getting it coming across the lake at 8am. It was already starting to white cap and off we went from my buddy Cary’s shoreline in his pond prowler. He was looking for suggestions and my first one was to get up wind so if /when the little trolling motor died at least we would be up wind for the occasion. The first thing I wanted to check out was a few windy points but with 2 grown men in a pond prowler in the wind it’s a task so we settled a couple of creeks and pockets out of the wind. I started out throwing a whopper plopper while Cary threw a spinnerbait but I pretty much knew what the bait was going to be already, I was just going through the motions to show Cary the topwater stuff. After about an hour of throwing the power stuff we headed for a calmer cove or creek and put on the old faithful shaky head and found the pattern. There is a lot of submerged grass and timber lining the shore on the lake and I found the fish mainly hanging on the edge of the grass. Once we figured that out we caught some very nice fish for Cary and his wife who is from Peru and loves to eat fish, qs well as Cary. When I say she loves fish, I mean she loves to eat the whole fish, like eyeballs and all so they keep everything which is fine with me.
I was able to show Cary how to rig the shaky head rod and it didn’t take long till he caught his personal best bass 5lber (pictured above). He was pretty stoked and the bass put up a valiant fight. We caught 7 nice keepers in about 3 hours of fishing and a couple smaller bass which went back, all on a pretty simple 1/4 ounce green pumpkin finesse shaky head. I didn’t get to check out much because of the conditions but I’m sure I’ll visit again before long and maybe get a chance to cover more of the lake. Since the wind was out of the north and we were on the south end of the lake we didn’t make it up to the northern part of the creek but since Cary now lives on the lake I’ll be fishing it more over the coming months. Fun morning of fishing!
First it was toilet paper and then it was my favorite corned beef hash, but now they’ve gone too far with this shortage of 125 Sebiles. If I was a country singer I’d be singing a number one hit called “Jonesin for a Sebile on Lanier” right about now because you can’t find a slow sink 125 Sebile anywhere in the south. They’re gone except for a few of those fancy chrome ones. There are probably thousands of Sebiles sitting in one of those containers off the coast of California headed for Tackle Warehouse right now. I have a stash of 125 Sebiles somewhere in this house and I’ve been searching for them for days but I have tackle everywhere including 2 shops, an attic and a large garage so finding my stash of Sebiles could take years. I’ve tore this place apart only to find one usable 125 Sebile and then I bummed one from my buddy Mike to make it 2 usable Sebiles for the week. I painted both of them my pearl white color and started my week.
This week the Sebile bite hasn’t been off the charts for me and I’ve had to work for my bites but I’ve really amassed some fish by weeks end. It’s mainly been right place right time but there has been a little skill involved. I only needed the pearl white Sebile all week and I literally wore them out, both the fish and the Sebiles. Right now my milk run is out on the main lake early and then working my way back to the creek by midday. This week the bulk of my numbers have been from the creek in the afternoon but the larger size is still out on the main lake, whether it’s humps or points.
I think that my gear was the most important part to my success this week. On Monday I started using 10lb Tatsu flouro with the Sebile but the fish were very leery of the bait so I dropped it down to 8lb Tatsu and that was the ticket. The fish started showing more interest in the bait and were much more aggressive with the 8lb. I was able to catch a few fish just blind casting the bait around brush and out on points which has been kinda hard lately as most of the fish have been caught while fish were schooling or shortly after they stopped schooling. I was throwing the Sebile on my 7’6″ MH Shimano Clarus with a Diawa Fuego 2500 spinning reel. I could throw the Sebile a long way with the spinning gear and it handled the bass and stripers just fine. Speaking of stripers, I caught a lot on the Sebile this week and at times they were much more aggressive than the bass and that 8lb Tatsu handled the stripers like a champ. I gotta hand it to the Tatsu, it takes away a lot of worry about line breaks when catching a big one.
Basically this week was about moving around and making casts early on the main lake. If the fish weren’t coming up on a hump or point out on the main lake I was making blind casts with a steady retrieve and the pearl white Sebile I painted was very visible just below the surface. It was pretty awesome to watch some of the fish just slam the Sebile. Some of the stripers would just come out of nowhere and aggressively slash through it and sometimes a whole school of a few dozen bass would follow it back to the boat without a reaction. Sometimes bass would fight over it and sometimes they didn’t want anything to do with it. If the fish started schooling and I could cast the Sebile into the area they were schooling, the Sebile would be hammered almost immediately every time. I gotta tell you that there were times when I just knew I was going to get hammered by a schooling fish and my heart would be racing with the anticipation of feeling that tug and the chance for a big bass. You fishermen know exactly what I’m talking about. Sometimes I could cast the Sebile in the area where schooling had just occurred and I could coax a fish back up to whack the Sebile. It was just a fun week of not having to throw the kitchen sink at these fish and the Sebile is low impact with high rewards. I suppose there could have been other baits out there that worked better than my painted Sebile this week but I was perfectly content with just sticking with it and getting the occasional nice fish. The video below pretty much covers the extent of my pattern, cast the Sebile out and reel in back in.
I think the fish were much more aggressive in the afternoon also. It seemed like a lot of fish in the morning were just a bit slow to react to the Sebile but by the afternoon they were out in the sun chasing bluebacks. A lot of times I was just looking around to see where the fish were coming up and if I saw fish schooling I would make my way to where the action was and make some casts. I think it’s a good idea to keep a watch out for surfacing fish on points and humps right now. If you see fish schooling and surface activity make a mental note of it and pay that area a visit as soon as you can. I was also able to utilize my Spot Lock on the trolling motor and sit up wind of a lot of places and just fan cast the Sebile down wind when the fish weren’t coming up. It was a blast to feel the rod load up with a nice fish out in the wind and white caps on the main lake. Even in the big choppy waves the fish were still blasting the Sebile.
This week I’m not much help with the fishing report unless you’ve got a stash of light colored Sebiles hid away in your tackle box and if that’s the case, it’s time to use them.
The lake is just above full pool and the water temps are mid to low 70’s. The corps is moving water in the afternoons and evenings. Here are a few pictures of some memorable fish this week. All of these fish were caught on the custom painted Sebile including 2 very nice largemouth caught on back to back casts on a rocky secondary point.
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