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.
When I reminisce about my time out west while in the Navy, the memories can come and go, some never return (thankfully), and are lost forever but there are others that stay in my mind because of the significance of the event. I know I told this story a few years back on a local podcast and I’m pretty sure Lisa has heard it at least a half dozen times, but I still like telling it because it was one of my more memorable near-death experiences while in the Navy. In my latter years in the Navy, I developed a successful process by which I would analyze a situation and the outcome of my actions. It’s called “Operational Risk Management”, or ORM for short. It is a process by which I would ask myself if it was worth doing, not worth doing, or maybe even overdoing it a little bit. In some situations, the process is not worth doing, but when you add a couple cold drinks, good ORM can turn into bad ORM in a hurry.
I was going on my tenth year in the Navy and by then I had it all figured out. I was at my peak when it came to being bullet-proof and some may argue that I was too stupid to be scared during that period of my life. Being in a F-14 Tomcat fighter squadron had that effect on young sailors like me and I learned very quickly after joining the squadron that you had to be tough to be in the squadron. The Tomcat was an older fighter, and it always had older aircraft problems. Every day I went into work, there was something different to work on. They say that it took 72 man-hours to fly the Tomcat one flight hour, and I don’t dispute that for a minute. I’ve seen everything from squirrels invading our hanger at night and chewing through bundles of wiring in the aircraft avionics bays to exploding engines and subsequent flaming fireballs on engine startups. It was hard work for sure, but you know what they say, work hard, play hard. That’s what I did, I still don’t know why I played hard, but I guess my brain wasn’t fully developed so I did stupid stuff from time to time. For some reason I liked to hang out in bars during this time period, more specifically, bars with pool tables so I could pass the time shooting pool. Since I was a boy, I spent time in the pool halls. My grandfather would take me when I was young and while he played dominoes with his veteran friends, I would occupy my time in the back of the bar playing pool. I’ve always played pool somewhere. Even now I have a billiard room complete with a 9-foot table to remind me of earlier times and the fun I’d had over the years playing pool.
When my roommate Frank and I rented a house out in Santee, a suburb of San Diego, we found a local bar with a pool table just down the road from our house. Our house had a pool table, but we liked to hang out at the bar, drinking beer and shooting pool from time to time. After we got to know the bartender and the owner of the bar, Frank and I joined a coed billiard team that consisted of myself, Frank and two women we had met at the bar that like to shoot pool. We had befriended Teri and Lisa, our partners and teammates, both single and they were pretty good pool players. We decided to form a coed team and shoot pool in a local pool league that traveled around to different bars in the area and competed with other coed teams. It was a lot of fun, and it was pretty cool to compete with other pool players to match my skill against others. Between the four of us, we were pretty competitive and personally, I loved the attention of having an audience while shooting pool in competition.
This was the early 90’s and back then there was no internet to surf or cell phones to call people on a whim, and one way of meeting people to date was the classified ads in the newspaper. In San Diego there was a dating service or “dating club” in the classified ads that guaranteed one fully vetted date each month for a year for $100.00 a month and you had to pay for something like 6 months up front. The dating service catered to the upper income crowd who wanted to be more discrete in their social life, and that’s where Lisa came in. She was a very successful realtor in the San Diego area, and she wanted to meet a man who was very financially stable, and looking for a partner in her age group, which was late forties to early fifties at the time. It was her first date since joining the dating club and she was excited. She knew very little about her date, other than that he was in his late forties and an officer in the military, but she was very optimistic. They had discussed a Friday night outing for dinner, and drinks afterwards at our local bar. It was all set up and Lisa wanted a way out of the date just in case things weren’t going well, so that’s where I came in. Lisa wanted me to hang out at the bar for a while and she would give me a report after they got to the bar and after Lisa got to know Bill. The fact that I was in the Navy, and bullet proof of course, may come in handy later in her evening if the guy turned out to be a flake. If he was a weirdo, then the date would end at the bar, and I would give Lisa a ride back home. That was the plan.
I gotta say that I was a little skeptical about the dating service that Lisa had joined. I worried that there may be some rich men with bad morals in the dating site and I wondered how well the men were vetted. The night finally came, and I was poised at a barstool positioned at the very end of the bar and it was very crowded for a Friday night. By the time Lisa and her date came in, it was standing room only in the bar and I was waiting patiently for my turn at the pool table. I had already consumed a couple beers and I was feeling pretty good about my chances once I got to the pool table. It was just my kind of night with the large crowd in the bar. A large crowd in the bar meant a large crowd watching the billiard games in the back. They had one pool table in the back of the bar and the area always gathered a crowd if someone good was playing pool. I wanted that someone to be me, so I waited for my quarters to come up. When Lisa and her date came through the door, they were greeted by some of the regulars at the bar as they made their way towards the back of the bar at the other end from where I was sitting. Lisa and I made eye contact as they came in and I could tell by her smile, it was going well. The bar was long and stretched from the front of the room to the back with bar stools all the way down and around the bar. It had to be 60-80 feet in length and there was also a small dance floor in the room. It was shoulder to shoulder as Lisa and Bill settled in to an area at the back of the bar and I could see from a distance that her date Bill was larger and older looking. At first, I thought that he looked too old to be actively in the Navy but he also looked big and was taller than most of the folks around him as he walked to the back of the bar. I watched them chatting with one another and soon I saw Lisa pointing my way as if explaining to Bill who I was. I could see them both looking at me and having a conversation, so I assumed that Lisa was telling Bill about me. Soon I saw Lisa heading my way as Bill stayed at the other end of the bar. I was in full protection mode by then and Lisa sounded excited when we greeted each other. She explained that he was a true gentleman and was very kind. She liked him because he seemed so upfront, honest and outgoing about his work. When I asked her what he did for a living she responded that he was a Commando in Navy SEALs.
This is probably where I should jump in and explain a few things about Navy SEALs and the eighties and early nineties. Back then the Navy SEALs stayed in the shadows. They led very private lives and unless you were told that someone was a Navy SEAL, you’d probably never know they existed. They were never on your local news channel, never on CNN and they led very private lives. About all I knew about Navy SEALs was from my only encounter with them during Navy boot camp and that was a rough night of fun and games as punishment for something I did. If you go to my “Sea Stories” section of the blog or do a search and find the story “The Marching Party” you’ll find out all about my encounter with the SEALs early on in my career. I had also read a couple of Richard Marcinko’s “Rogue Warrior” novels and if you ever get the chance, the “Rogue Warrior” novels are a great way to get familiar with the Navy SEALs and what they do. That’s about all I had to go by at the time, but I did know that the chance of running across a real Navy SEAL was pretty slim when out in a small bar in a small suburb of San Diego. Since SEALs in that era like to lead private lives and leave a very small footprint, I changed all the names in story out of respect for Bill. The rest of the events that happened next are all true though.
So, Lisa tells me that her date was a Navy SEAL Commando and immediately I raised the bullshit flag. I didn’t know much about the Navy SEALs but what I did know was that there was no chance that a crusty old dude standing at the other end of the bar was a Navy SEAL Commando. The term “Commando” wasn’t a term I was familiar with, and I told Lisa that her date may be a phony. I was getting a little defensive and stolen valor was a thing, even back then. I asked Lisa if she would kindly ask the gentlemen that I would like to see him and his military ID if he wouldn’t mind, so off she went. Hindsight dictates that this is where things should have been handled differently but once again, I didn’t use good ORM, and I was setting myself up for trouble. I wanted to make a point with this so-called Navy “Commando” imposter and to ask another man for their military ID at a bar with a date on a Friday night isn’t good military protocol unless you’re looking for a fight. By this time, I was getting fired up and I watched as Lisa explained to the old guy that I was interested in him and his identification at the other end of the bar. I knew that if I got up from the stool I was sitting on, I’d lose my seat, so I waited on Lisa’s return, and had some casual conversation with my neighbors at the bar.
When Lisa finally came back, she handed me an ID card and it was a military ID card for sure. I quickly looked at the back and saw an 0-5 under the rank box and I did a double take. I also noticed a Geneva code that further assured me that it was real. There was a moment of shock as I stared at the card and at that very moment Lisa said, “he says he wants to see your ID card”. That was when a cold chill shot down my spine and I knew that it was about to get real with a Commander in the Navy. I may have bit off a little more than I could chew and when I looked down at the other end of the bar Bill was gone. In another moment I felt this large body just behind me and to my left and when I turned to look, it was Bill hovering over me. He was huge and wide, well over 6 feet in height and he had this look on his face like he wasn’t playing ID card games anymore. I was still sitting on my barstool, but I felt like I was about to take a giant ass stomping from the sitting position to the ground in one fluent motion. Another cold chill ran down my spine and I stood up to face the music. I will say this, Bill’s stare was cold, his eyes were somewhat squinted and black. At times his stare was chilling, for lack of a better word. I’ve been in a few fights in my life, but I’ll say this about that moment in time, when I looked in this man’s eyes, it was like he was looking right through me. I don’t know if it was gut instinct or the Holy Spirit telling me not to screw with this guy or Jello could be on my menu for the next several months while the facial bones healed. I didn’t know where this was going but just about the time I expected the encounter to escalate into a scene, Bill broke out into a smile and stuck out his hand to shake my hand. Talk about a relief! It was like every muscle in my body relaxed and went limp. I thought for sure there was going to be a fight, but I was so relieved to see he was friendly to me. I explained that the mix-up was that he was a Commander in the Navy and not a Commando. We laughed as we shook hands, and I will say this about that moment, I’m very thankful that there were no punches thrown because Bill had huge hands that were very hard and callused. Not the kind of hand or fist you want upside your head in a fight. Bill told me that he was a Navy SEAL and had been for quite a few years. He worked down at Coronado Island and was coming to the end of his career and thinking about retirement after twenty some years of service. We talked about my job in the Navy, and he was very curious about what the aviation side of the Navy was like. He came from the Midwest as did I, so we hit it off from the start and talked about where we grew up hunting and fishing.
At the time, it didn’t really dawn on me that I was just a little E-5 turning wrenches on fighter jets while making friends with a Navy SEAL with twenty-some years in the Navy and the rank of Commander. I never really advertised it much and I kinda knew that Bill’s life was somewhat clandestine after chatting with him a bit. I didn’t really ask a lot about his operations or his past history as I figured that some of those things would probably be better left unsaid. I could tell Bill had been around and I just knew that he was one heck of a warrior from the get-go. He really wanted to hear about my adventures, which at times kept the conversation from his adventures. I think he was genuinely interested in aviation and always enjoyed conversations about our travels with the squadron, but he was somewhat vague and elusive when it came to exactly what he did.
Eventually Tina and I found a house and moved in together and Frank moved in with his new girlfriend, but we continued to shoot pool together on the coed league. Lisa and Tina were best friends, and they liked to hang out together. We had a swimming pool and jacuzzi at our house and Lisa and Bill were our guests on a few occasions to swim or sit in the jacuzzi drinking wine. Bill was between deployments to Iraq during Desert Storm when we met, and we got to spend some time together at the bar shooting pool and at the house hanging out at the pool. Bill was somewhat of an introvert and told me one time that he was most comfortable while overseas working. He said that when he was in the states there was a lot of responsibilities to take care of but when he was overseas, he could just focus on his job and no utility payments, car payments, insurance, mortgage, etc., just his job. I totally understood what he was talking about. It was the same when I was away from home on a detachment. It was a pretty weird friendship to have between a Navy SEAL officer and an Enlisted E-5 wrench turner from Miramar, but our girlfriends were best friends, so we were kind of thrown into the friendship. Bill liked hanging out with us though, and he was a lot of fun to have around at the bar. We traveled a lot during this time period so there were times that Bill was gone, or I was traveling with my squadron, but when we were both in town we would get together at the house or spend a weekend in Vegas with the girls. Unfortunately, Bill had to deploy again to Iraq, and I was transferring to Louisiana from San Diego. After I got to Louisiana, I had gotten word that Bill had returned from his deployment to Iraq and received a silver star as well as being promoted to Captain. That was quite an honor for him for sure and I wanted to congratulate him in person if I could. I was coming up for another 4-year re-enlistment and I called Bill to ask if he would swear me in for another four-year tour in the Navy. He told me that since the fast boats that the SEALs used for operations were being built at a shipyard in the New Orleans area and he could kill two birds with one stone he would be there. He said he needed to visit the shipyard and check on the boats being built for the SEALs and he would be happy to drop by the squadron and swear me in. He just asked that we kept it semi-private because he didn’t want to draw a lot of attention to himself while visiting.
When I told my Commanding Officer that a friend of mine that was a Navy Captain and a Navy SEAL would be dropping in to the squadron to swear me in, I got a pretty funny look from the CO. He wanted to make sure we gave Bill all the honors he deserved without making a big deal out of it, so we kept it to ourselves until the day arrived. I was really anxious to see Bill in his uniform with his Trident, a fresh silver star to go with a couple of bronze stars and Captains bars. I’d never seen him all dressed up before, but on my re-enlistment day in the early afternoon, he pulled up in a rental car and walked through the halls of the squadron to re-enlist me in his uniform. We set up a private room for the ceremony and my Commanding Officer as well as our Executive Officer were present to greet Bill. Bill was a Captain in rank which outranked both the CO and XO of my squadron. It was very interesting to see how the other officers acted around Bill and I’m sure they were very perplexed at how we had become friends. Bill and I explained to the officers that were present how we became friends and then Bill swore me in for another 4-year tour. It was a very proud moment in my career, and I was very thankful that Bill took time out of his schedule to come and swear me in. Bill took the time to chat with some of the officers and pilots that were in the area, and it was very cool to show Bill around the hangar and the aircraft where I worked. It was a very special day for me.
That was the last time I saw Bill, but he and Lisa went on to marry and as far as I know, they still reside in Florida somewhere, but we lost touch years ago. In the Navy friends come and go but the memories last forever. I’ve always had a profound respect for our Navy SEALs and the job that they are tasked with. They are truly our unsung heroes.
Believe it or not, for me, not every fishing trip leads to the success of catching fish. I know, I know, that’s a shocking revelation, but I’ve learned over the years that when God sends me fishing, it’s not always the fish that makes my trip a success. Sometimes God sends me on fishing trips, but he has other things in mind, and I’ve been blessed with the wisdom to recognize this as I’ve grown older. Sometimes he sends me for fellowship or more specifically, to be a good listener that will ultimately draw me closer to Him through the needful prayers for others.
Case in point: A few years back I took my former pastor out on an early fall fishing trip. My pastor isn’t an avid fisherman, but he knows the basics of cast and retrieve so off we went with spinnerbaits and crankbaits at the ready. An hour into the trip I started catching fish on a spinnerbait while the pastor was having no luck with the crankbait, so I gave him my rod with the successful spinnerbait I was using. I showed him the correct retrieval speed and even told him exactly where to cast while I took over the crankbait duties. After going down the bank for the next 30 minutes, I started having success with the crankbait while my pastor never got a sniff on the spinnerbait. I figured that the crankbait was starting to work better than the spinnerbait, so I gave my pastor the crankbait rod and I took the spinnerbait rod back. Shortly afterwards I caught back-to-back fish on the spinnerbait while the pastor continued to struggle with the crankbait again. I was closing in on a dozen fish and decided to quit fishing for a while and just work with the pastor and his technique as well as his casting location with the spinnerbait. I honestly tried my best and bent over backwards to make his day catching fish, but it just didn’t happen and at the end of our trip I had well over a dozen fish. At the very end of our trip, he caught one tiny 6-inch fish to end the trip and it was almost like a slap in the face for him to reel in one tiny little bass to end our day. I couldn’t believe what had just happened and it was as if something biblical had happened because it was so strange and unbelievable. I’ve taken hundreds of people fishing over the years, but I couldn’t explain what had just happened, so I prayed about it and almost immediately got my answer.
“Answers to question type prayers generally come in the form of an epiphany for me and I knew right away that God didn’t send him there to catch fish with me but to fellowship”. It could have been the introduction of something to pray for or someone to pray for but the whole day I knew something was off. I could tell that the pastor was pre-occupied with thoughts and so I prayed for him and whatever was troubling him. I also prayed for his fishing skills to improve but I didn’t really count on that miracle. jk. The point is that some fishing trips aren’t about fishing at all. I’d like y’all to keep that in mind on your next failed outing. Some trips may be to demonstrate a little well needed humbleness for some, or perhaps the healing medicine of fellowship that leads prayer for others. It could be any number of reasons other than catching fish.
Our Trip
I’ve known Greg since we were in kindergarten together back in southeast Kansas and after some 44 years we were reunited when Greg and his wife moved to within an hour away from us. Greg and I had gotten together a few years back and fished together shortly after Greg moved to the area, so I knew Greg liked to fish. Greg used to go to the Outer Banks, NC on fishing trips with his brother Keith, who I also knew but Keith passed away recently, and Greg invited me to accompany him on his annual fall trip to the Outer Banks. I’d never been to the Outer Banks, but it had always intrigued me to fish there, so I signed on to go with Greg in early October. Another classmate of ours, Bill decided to join us for our 5-day trip to the Outer Banks. It was going to be myself, Greg and Bill staying at the Cape Lookout cottages on the Outer Banks for three full days of surf fishing on the eastern seashore of the island. Our cabin was within shouting distance of the beach and to access the island we had to ride the Davis Ferry over from the mainland. Once you arrived on the island it was all sand and driving was a bit unusual because the access to the beach was sand roads that parallelled the beach. The Davis Ferry was large enough to accommodate 4-5 vehicles and 4-wheel drive is a must. It was also a must to deflate the vehicle tires down to about 20-25 pounds of pressure to help with the traction from driving in the sand. Believe me, it definitely helped, especially when driving down the soft sandy beaches. Vehicles were allowed to drive on the beaches and there were even campers, rv’s and pull behinds parked along the beach that stretched a good 15-20 miles. The parallelling access road was narrow and there were pullouts in case one vehicle met another vehicle going opposite directions on the route. Here’s a picture of my view while driving the beach access road and you can see two pullouts not far ahead.
Bill, Greg and I all rode together from Georgia and arrived on Friday evening just before sunset, so we decided to offload some personal gear and fish for the remaining time before dark. We drove to the beach just outside the cabin and I learned the fishing tackle setup fairly quickly. The surf was really rolling and there were 4–5-foot breakers rolling in as we pulled the gear out of the back of the truck. Greg had a couple of friends from his former employment that were staying on the island as well and we paid them a quick visit to see if they couple spare a little fresh bait on the way to the beach. The main bait of choice for us was cut bait finger mullet that were netted earlier in the day by Greg’s friends. Here’s a couple pictures of our setup, while Greg and Bill rig gear, and my view of my big surf rod from my beach chair.
The Gear
Basically, we had 10-foot surf rods with big spinning reels loaded with heavy mono line and heavy weights as well as big circle hooks to hold the cut mullet. The heavy lead weights we used we called “Sputniks” and they were basically 4–7-ounce oval shaped weights with four wires that were about 4 inches long protruding from the weight on 4 equal sides to help hold the weight in the sand like an anchor of sorts. Below is a picture of a 4-ounce sputnik weight that we used to hold the bait in the heavy surf.
The wires were held in place by slots in the lead and with a quick jerk you could release the wires from the slots and the wires would pop loose and rotate 180 degrees from the slots to make the weight easier to retrieve. Casting was interesting as we would hold the big rod over your shoulder dragging the weight and bait in the sand behind you. As the surf went out you would walk to the water’s edge, and you would launch the rig in an over the shoulder cast using the rod tip bend as the launcher. Depending on how strong you were dictated how far you could launch the weight and bait. Just to give you an example, I caught on pretty quick and took pride in launching the rig about 30-40 yards, past the breakers. It was a challenge for me to see how far out I could get the rig, but the further the better because sometimes the wires on the Sputnik wouldn’t hold and if the rig was in the surf, it would usually get washed right back up to the beach.
We didn’t really catch anything the first night, but we didn’t fish long. It was more of a training exercise than a fish catching mission because neither Bill nor I had done this type of fishing before. We had brought plenty of food to cook and the cabin had a stove to cook on as well as me bringing a little portable Blackstone to cook on also. Bill is an excellent Cajun food cook, and we ate well the whole time. I had also brought enough crappie filets to provide a fish fry for us a couple of nights. Well also had a pork loin one night that was delicious. We had different side dishes and desserts every evening, so we ate like kings the whole time.
We fished hard for 3 full days, but we just couldn’t catch anything substantial and after talking to other fishermen in the area, it was a problem for everyone. The heavy surf, moving tides and rip currents from an Atlantic hurricane far out at sea caused the bite to all but shut down on the coastline. We tried every trick in the book but the big bites we did get turned out to be toothy sharks that would cut the line almost immediately and the target fish, like Bluefish and drum were very few and far between. I was taken in by the wildlife and the scenery in the area as the island was covered with sea oats, wax myrtle and beach grass everywhere but the beach itself. The beach was riddled with sea gulls, sand pipers and the occasional fly-by consisting of one or more pelicans. I watched out past the breakers as the pelicans would dive on fish out past the breakers time and time again. There was the constant squawking and chattering of the sea gulls here and there and they would do what gulls do, scavenging around the washed up Sargassum seaweed and I was amused by the little sand pipers as they pecked along in the surf as the waves receded in the surf. Sometimes the little sandpipers would come close to me, but they were aware of my existence and would stay about 5-10 from where I was sitting. I even saw a few Ospreys flying along the beach looking for a nice mullet dinner. Speaking of mullet, every once in a while, you could see mullet jumping out beyond the surf and I wondered if that was what the pelicans were hunting. We could also see what I thought to be small schools of bluefish surfacing in the distance but not anywhere near close enough to cast to. There was usually a distinct line of sandy churned up water in the surf that extending out into the Atlantic further than we could cast and I wondered if the churned-up water from the heavy surf kept the fish we were targeting further out to see. There were a lot of Carolina Skiff type flat bottom boats fishing out along a line where the water went from a sandy color to a blue color hundreds of yards out and further than even, I could cast.
Greg caught one or two small bluefish and some nice founder but the bluefish was too small and the flounder was out of season. Here’s a couple pictures of Bill and his flounder.
Yours truly didn’t catch a fish the whole trip and that was ok because I realized that I wasn’t there to catch fish but for other reasons. One of those reasons was to net bait for us which I thought was pretty cool. Mullet was our bait of choice and there was a lighthouse on the southern end of the island called the “Cape Lookout Lighthouse” and near the lighthouse was a courtesy dock inside the sound where a tour boat took passengers for a ride to look around inside the protected sound and a long gangway to the courtesy dock where passengers boarded the tour boat. That’s where we netted our mullet along with a lot of other fishermen. I knew how to throw a cast net, and I had a blast netting the mullet we needed from the gangway. We had to watch the water below and every once in a while, a little school of mullet would get close enough to the gangway for me to make a cast. The net was a little 6-footer and perfect for precise throwing when trying to hit a moving target of the small schools of mullet. It only took me about 7-8 throws to get 40-50 mullet that were about 6-8 inches in length, and we would keep some alive in a minnow bucket with a bubbler and the rest went on ice for cut bait. Here’s a few pictures from the bait netting excursion.
We also used fresh shrimp for bait and as a bonus, we used the leftover shrimp to add to our dinners for a couple of nights. We used smaller chunks of shrimp on smaller fishing rods to catch pinfish to use for bait but every time we used a live pinfish something big would tear off with it and ultimately break the 40lb test line. Whatever was eating the live pinfish was big and the only fish I had on, I couldn’t turn or stop, and it was either break the line or let the fish spool the reel. It was disheartening but a fun fight for a minute. The fishing wasn’t that great for our stay, but the fellowship was more than I could have imagined. We made it back home safely on our 5th day and I’m still catching up on my sleep. Here’s a few random pictures of the cabin. The first being the view from my bed when I woke up in the morning. There was usually on onshore breeze and the sound of the rolling surf coming through the window.
It was pretty awesome to hang out with two guys that I grew up with in little ole Girard, Kansas and chat about long past memories that I had forgotten all about. We told stories of our youth and talked about growing up and we also talked about the classmates that are no longer with us. We listened to music from our era growing up and even after returning home I’m still having these little mental flashbacks from my youth that were stirred up from our conversations and music of our youth while we were there. I’m not sure that I’ll return to the Outer Banks for another trip because it was pretty hard on my body and I’m still feeling the aches and pains from the trip but one thing that’s for sure though, I’ll never forget our reunion at the Outer Banks.
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.
I’ve never been a big fan of the wind, but when it comes to fishing, they always say that “the wind is your friend”. A lot of folks don’t know this but the fighter jets on an aircraft carrier relied on the wind to help with taking off from the ship. On an aircraft carrier, just before morning flight operations start, the big carrier turns into the wind and puts the hammer down. Things go from relatively calm to controlled chaos in a matter of minutes when the carrier gets up to speed. Once the big carrier hits top speed, headlong into the wind, the rescue helicopters take off and get into position. By this time the jets are all starting up and getting flexed for morning operations and a constant 30 mph wind is blowing across the deck from bow to stern. You learn very quickly to lean into the wind and get used to it because it happened during every launch. The best part about the wind was that it blew the jet exhaust away from the bow of the carrier where I worked. Those poor guys that worked around the mid to back section of the carrier had to breath jet exhaust all day. It would constantly burn your eyes, and it couldn’t have been healthy to breath all day but up in the front of the carrier, the air was fresh and clean from the wind. This week I felt a few of those old 30 mph winds out on the lake.
This week, Monday came in like a lion. The weatherman predicted strong east winds all week and he wasn’t lying. When I walked out the back door at 4am the east wind was whipping the trees around in all directions. I thought about my options in the creek with a strong east wind and I hoped the wind wasn’t too strong for topwater offerings. Late last week I had a blast with the Z-dog walking bait, and I figured I’d just keep rolling with the Z-dog to start my week. I hit the creek at 8am on Monday morning and it was everything I expected. That east wind was coming right down the creek, and it was getting it. There are places in the creek that are somewhat sheltered from the wind and that’s where I concentrated my efforts. The best bite in the creek had been coming from the mouth of the creek but I still wanted to check some areas towards the back of the creek to see if the population of bass have increased. I’m still targeting brush on points and brush on humps in 20-30 feet of water. A lot of the fish that I’m seeing are hanging around, either near, over the top or inside the brush piles and luring them up with topwater this time of year can be a chore. I figured that the topwater would be better because of the wind and I also wanted to try some plopper or choppo action in the wind to help get the fishes attention as well as some larger profile topwater stuff.
I started with the Z-dog over brush piles, and I had limited success. I caught some smaller fish during the course of Monday morning, but the bigger fish were lacking and not as interested in the Z-dog as late last week. I think that the Z-dog wasn’t as visible to the fish in the bigger waves and a lot of the fish I was seeing on LiveScope showed limited interest in the topwater. It got me to thinking that there had to be a better way to catch these more lethargic, suspended fish around the brush. The spybait had a very low success rate and the underspin just wasn’t producing the committed fish for me, so I started thinking about my old “friend in the wind”, the Mini Me spinnerbait by SpotSticker Baits. It may have been last fall, but I remember a very windy day that the topwater just wasn’t cutting it, so I tied on a Mini Me and smashed the bass over brush Spot Locking upwind and bringing the spinnerbait over the top of brush. The wind is all it took to get the bass to react. Ryan Coleman, the owner of SpotSticker sent me a few of his spinnerbaits last year and I had a blast with them. There was one in particular that outshined them all, on sunny or cloudy days and it quickly became my favorite, especially on windblown points when the bass are chasing shad.
One bright spot to Monday’s trip was a Very nice largemouth I caught on the Z-dog but the cast to catch ratio with the Z-dog was depleting and my poor old surgically repaired shoulder was taking a beating from making empty casts. I was thinking there had to be something better.
On Tuesday I had physical therapy in the morning, so I didn’t get out till lunchtime, and I was greeted with the same east wind as the day before. I had dug around in my boat on Tuesday and found my favorite spinnerbait to add to my arsenal of baits. In my digging, I also found a little bag of Lip Thrashin chrome risers and I tied one on right away. It didn’t take long till the little riser produced a nice 3lb fish and I really thought I was onto something with topwater and the riser, but I went on a little dry spell, so I went with a bigger profile and tied on the old faithful Ima ko. It didn’t take long till I had a few blowups and a couple of fish on the Ima, but I was still making a lot of casts that were coming up empty. Most of the fish that I saw on LiveScope just didn’t want to come up all the way to the surface again. They would religiously follow the bait back to the boat, scattering as they came, but refused to rise to the bait. Every once in a while, one would commit but the success rate was one in 15-20 casts with topwater. I caught a few nice fish on Tuesday but never threw the spinnerbait, just sticking with running and gunning topwater stuff.
Wednesday morning I hit it early and found that topwater was on life support early, so I went to the spinnerbait on a windblown rocky point. On my first cast with the spinnerbait, I was targeting a group of fish just beyond a brushpile with LiveScope and I made a cast just past the group. It was a small wolfpack and I ran the spinnerbait right through them. The cool thing about a spinnerbait is that when the fish hit that thing, It’s brutal. The bigger fish attack that spinnerbait with extreme prejudice and they can jerk a rod right out of your hand. That constant load that the blades of the spinnerbait make can be somewhat hypnotic, and if you’re not expecting it can startle me. In this case, I felt the lure unload for a brief second and then the rod just doubled over. I pulled and reeled down on the fish and I knew it was a good one. The problem was that the fish went straight into the brush that was between the boat and the fish. It was a good fish and the more I tried to coax the fish out of the brush, the more tangled the fish because so eventually the line broke and my only spinnerbait in that pattern was gone.
I tied on a chrome bladed Mini Me spinnerbait and started throwing it but my confidence level for the chrome blade wasn’t as high as the white painted blade so eventually I went back to topwater and found a little Gunfish bite in the afternoon hours. The little chrome Gunfish was my “go to” bait a few weeks back and with the wind this week, I brought it back into the rotation Wednesday afternoon. No real big fish but it did produce some great blowups and a few fish over brush. On Thursday morning I had therapy but before hand I made a trip to the little tackle store on Buford Dam road and I picked up 3 more of my favorite 3/4 ounce Mini Me spinnerbaits, which were the last 3, by the way. I also purchased one smaller chrome Choppo, not the bigger one that we had success with on Hartwell but the smaller version. I knew the choppo would produce something.
After therapy on Thursday, I hit the lake with around noon and immediately went to a big flat in the creek where the wind wasn’t as direct. There was still a chop on the water but it was perfect for the little chrome Choppo so I gave it a hurl. This is no kidding, I pulled on it once, and a big bass just smashed it on the surface. The rod doubled over and, in an instant, the line broke. It broke right at the knot between the braid and flouro leader. I should have known better, I hadn’t used that rig in a while, and I should have checked the knot. At any rate, the Choppo was gone, and I didn’t get it back after waiting around to see if the fish would shake it out. At my second stop of the morning, I pulled out the spinnerbait and started throwing it around the fish that I saw on the LiveScope and almost immediately I hooked a giant. It was an epic battle back to the boat and the big bass just kept making those bulldog runs when close to the boat. I actually got the net under the fish at one point and the fish was able to swim over the top of the net before coming unbuttoned. It was definitely my biggest bass of the year and losing the fish got in my head for a while. I kept hitting brush with the spinnerbait and on just about every stop for the rest of the day, the spinnerbait saw action. Most of the afternoon on Thursday was spent throwing the spinnerbait over and around brush and I was getting some good numbers. I found that if I approached a point or hump, I just used the spinnerbait with nothing else. I found that if I threw the topwater, the fish would scatter with very little success but if I just threw the spinnerbait without topwater, the spinnerbait success was far greater than the topwater success, if that makes sense.
My LIveScope was a big part of my success on Thursday but I found that I really didn’t want to watch the fish birddogging my bait back to the boat so I would turn the transducer away and just wait for the rod to load up. It was actually more fun not knowing exactly what was happening and feel the surprise of the bite rather than watching it unfold in real time with LiveScope. Nonetheless, it was fun with the little Mini Me on Thursday and Then again yesterday I relied on it heavily for my bites. I did catch a few sporadic fish here and there on topwater but I found that the spinnerbait bite was best hitting the undisturbed fish over and around brush in 20-30 feet of water. The spinnerbait really stood out on windblown points also. If the wind was blowing onto or across a point or hump the fish were generally set up on the leeward drop-off of the point or hump. It was like the fish were waiting on the bait to be blown across the point and they were ambushing it on the edge of the drop off. The spinnerbait worked well and every once in a while, a fish would just break ranks and slam it. One of the biggest keys to my success was to give the bait a good 10-15 count when fishing out in those 20-30 foot depths. Most of the fish are suspended around the 15-30 depths and running the spinnerbait at 15 feet is usually right in their wheelhouse. Another tip is to keep your rod tip down when using a spinnerbait. You want the spinnerbait to run as level as possible and by having a rod tip up, the spinnerbait is running at an up angle. I like to keep my rod tip very close to the waterline on my retrieve. Once I connect with a fish, I raise the rod tip to keep the fishes head up. If I see the fish is going to jump, I quickly lower my rod tip. You don’t want these fish to jump and throw that spinnerbait.
I finished my week with nothing but spinnerbait and when tallying the numbers for the week, the spinnerbait produced the best with over 20 fish, the Z-dog came in a close second with at least a dozen. The big chrome Choppo accounted for 6-7 and about the same for a chrome whooper plopper. The gunfish, Ima ko and Riser caught multiple fish this week but the standout was definitely the spinnerbait in the wind. The water temps are sitting at around 80 degrees and slowly falling as well as our lake levels. Here’s some of my memorable fish from this week.
Here we are again, another Saturday and the feel of Autumn is just a few days beyond our grasp. Here in Georgia, football season officially starts at noon today when UGA kicks off its season with the Clemson Tigers. The days are getting shorter, and the lake is starting to cool. Back here in the back of the creek, the water is a bit stained, and vertical lines of bubbles are streaking to the surface from the floor of the lake as the lake begins its fall turnover. This will slowly work its way out of the back of the creek and towards the main lake over the next couple of months as the thermocline breaks down and the fish start orienting more towards the bottom in late fall. Until that time, we should have some fun topwater days ahead.I’m not sure it even exists anymore but years ago at Disneyland all the fastest roller coasters required an “E-Ticket” to ride them, and the e-ticket would cost extra to purchase. If you had kids that were big enough to ride the good rides, you usually purchased e-tickets for everyone so you could feel the thrill of the good rides. This week, topwater was my e-ticket ride on the lake and I didn’t bother with anything else.
I got to go out on the lake every day this week, but Tuesday and Thursday were short days due to physical therapy on the knee in the mornings. It’s going on 8 weeks since my knee replacement and that sucker is still painful. Some of it is from the therapy and some pain is self-induced from getting up and down in the boat every day. Probably, the best therapy is the boat activity, but I know that physical therapy helps, especially with the muscles around the knee. The pain is mainly bone pain in an area that had a lot of arthritis so in addition to cutting off the top of the tibia and fibula, they had to clean a lot of arthritis on the bone. That area is still sore. As far as knee function goes, the knee does well but I can only stand for about 10 minutes before I have to sit down and rest the leg. It’s mainly the muscles around the knee that are the weakest. The quad and the calf muscles are still weak, and my hamstring is still kinda messed up from the tourniquet. Icing down my knee several times a day helps with the pain and swelling and hopefully the pain will subside soon.
I’d say that the fishing is typical for this time of year and having Livescope for my first summer has been very interesting. It’s just amazing to see how these fish set up and react to bait presentation on Livescope and I’ve got to admit, it’s a game changer. For me, it’s just about 1 or 2 baits and moving around a lot. A few years back, you would have seen me sweating it out with a spybait and a drop shot rod in hand, plinking around a brushpile with a pretty worm and 2D, but these days with Livescope, I’m just swinging for the fences with those topwater explosions and moving on. Most of the time it’s pretty obvious as to what’s going to happen when approaching brush with fish on it, you make your cast over the fish and the fish tend to follow the bait. Usually, if there is a group, the whole group gets curious and follows the bait back to the boat. Some fish in the group are less interested that others, but they still tend to follow the group. The group may be ten feet below my topwater bait but still swimming with the bait directly underneath. The idea is to get the fish to react to the bait and come to the surface to get it. Most times they either lose total interest and swim down deeper away from the bait or they make a few quick runs at the bait but stop their charge just a few feet below, just short of the bait and then swim away beneath the boat. Sometimes one fish will break ranks and just shoot straight up at my topwater while the rest of the group will follow, schooling on the bait on the surface. That’s usually when the explosion occurs and that’s been my e-ticket ride this week. That only happens about 10-20% of the time during these hot summer days but it’s worth the effort.
Early this week we had mild early morning temps and the fish responded well. We also had a moon over head for the morning hours which I believe effects the bite. There was some wind to work with and when there is wind, there is topwater. In the world of topwater fishing on Lanier right now, wind is life. The idea was to match the patches of wind with the point or hump with structure. If I could find chop or wind over a brushpile on a point or hump out on the main lake or in the creek, the chances of connecting with a topwater fish went way up. The water is very clear right now, and the fish has the ability to throw the bs flag if something doesn’t look right when they are approaching my bait. This causes the fish to either stop short of the bait or blowup in a near miss. It happens a lot so I found that if I sped the bait up so they couldn’t get a good look at the bait, they tend to react better. When I was using the Ima Skimmer ko I always moved it fast through the water. Believe me, if a fish wants the bait, they’ll chase it down, no problem. I made them chase it down, so they didn’t have time to look it over. The way this helped was with chop on the surface. The choppy backdrop confuses the fish even more and the fish is more likely to make a bad decision and totally commit to the bait if there is chop on the surface. Early this week the wind was easier to find, and the temps were mild, but as the week progressed the wind was harder to find, and the temps slowly went on the rise. By late this week I had to cruise around to find patches of chop in the morning hours. Thankfully I have great vision when looking off in the distance and I could match the chop with an area that was holding fish whether it was a point or hump on the main lake or in the creek. It pays to know the lake well and know a lot of locations when scouting for those patches or areas of chop.
The way it worked for me this week was I usually approached my target area from up wind. This is important for me for 2 reasons, one is that I get a longer cast, casting down wind and the second is that you will be bringing your topwater lure against the grain of the surface chop. By bringing your bait against the grain, this causes more surface disruption and makes the bait more noticeable to the fish from down below. I’ve found over the years that the fish react better to baits swimming upwind, vice going with the wind on the surface. Speed of the bait was crucial, and my retrieve was fast, but I still wanted the bait to produce the side-to-side action, splashing on the surface to get the fishes attention. That’s what usually created the strike, moving the bait swiftly and creating more surface disruption. Moving the bait quickly across the surface worked well, but my biggest fish this week came from killing the bait. I found that some fish that followed the bait from below would just come shooting up like a missile if I just killed my topwater bait and let it float lifelessly. I found the pattern when I got distracted from my retrieve with a phone call or typing a text and letting my bait just float on the surface during my retrieve. Early this week I realized that fish would just come up randomly and just explode on the bait right in the middle of my distraction. For that reason, I started periodically killing my bait, about halfway back to the boat at random times just to see if I could get a fish to react to the lifeless bait. It worked a few times and just killing the topwater would create a strike from the following fish below. By late this week, the stopping pattern during the retrieve happened often. I only used 2 baits this week. First was the Ima Skimmer knockoff from Chuck Thrasher and “Lip Thrashin” Lures Monday through Thursday, and yesterday every fish came from the Azuma Zdog walking bait in the Casper Shad pattern. It’s been a favorite of mine on Lanier for years and I knew the fish had been getting a good look at the Ima baits lately.
All in all, it was a good week and to be catching topwater fish in late August, that’s a bonus. I think that Livescope has helped with that effort, but nonetheless, it’s been fun so far with Livescope. The heat has been tough this week but I’ve kept covered, move about 30-40 times in a day and I also have a big Igloo water jug with iced down water to drink on during the day. The lake temps are around the mid-eighties both out in the creek and main lake and the lake looks to be down a couple feet and falling fast. Here’s a few of my notable fish from the week. Hopefully cooler changes are coming soon.
I was listening to the sermon from an elderly pastor a few years back and he said that sometimes God will pull us out of the fire and sometimes He leaves us in the fire but makes us fireproof. He does this because he loves us and wants us to draw closer to him. God has given us all a gift, and He wants us to use our gift to serve others. We’ve all been given a purpose in life but many times, we get confused about our purpose. When I developed a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, He was pleased, and among other things, He gave me clarity on my path in life through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There are four words in the Bible that are used time and time again but it’s the hardest four words to follow in life. Those four words are “Do Not Be Afraid”. When we take up that cross and walk with Jesus, fear falls away like the shedding of old skin. I no longer live in fear. -Jim Farmer
One of the bravest statements I’ve ever heard came from a former Marine named Mark “Oz” Geist, a member of the Annex Security Team in Benghazi and survivor of the Sept. 11th Benghazi attack. During an interview when asked if he was afraid of dying during the battle of Benghazi he said: “Why would I be afraid of dying? One of two things was going to happen, either I was going home to be with my family, or I was going home to be with my Father”. He had overcome his fear through Faith.
I encourage everyone to read more about Mark and his faith. Even David had the courage and faith to pick up that stone and defeat Goliath.
A few weeks ago, I went back to my Ortho surgeon’s office to see if I could get another shot in my knee, but the doc said unfortunately it’s time to replace it. He wouldn’t give me another shot because I would need to wait three months after the shot to have my knee replaced, and the knee needed to be replaced very soon. The plan is to do knee replacement surgery on the nineth of July unless something comes open earlier but in the interim the doc said he wanted me to work the knee as much as possible, so it doesn’t stiffen up before the replacement surgery. Running and gunning the lake with nothing but topwater is just what the doctor ordered and so this week, I’ve just been following doctors’ orders.
This week was another week of nothing but topwater. We had some decent wind just about every day this week and I’m still working on 2 major bite periods with one being early in the morning, the other being in the afternoon/evening. As far as my bait of choice this week, it’s been pretty simple, it started out on Monday and Tuesday with the chrome Spook jr over and around brush and as of this morning, I’ve switched back to the chrome 95 Gunfish. It seemed to me that the Spook jr was more effective in the heavier chop because of the louder rattles but the Gunfish that I’m using has better flash. I’ve just about wore all the chrome of my only Spook jr and I’ve appropriately named it Jonah. It’s a long story but the name is fitting because of what this Spook jr has been through over the last 2 weeks.
A few weeks ago, I saw a little chrome Spook jr in a box of unused tackle down in the man cave, so I carried it down to the boat. It sat in my boat for a few days but a couple weeks ago I discovered that these afternoon fish were really responding to chrome so one afternoon I broke out the little chrome Spook jr and put it to work. It didn’t take long till I had my first fish on the Spook jr and I could tell from looking at my Livescope that the fish were very interested in the bait. I think it was the sound of the rattles that got their attention. It was definitely a different sound than my Gunfish and the fact that it was chrome really sealed the deal in the chop. After using it for a while and several fish later that day, I broke a fish off, which is kind of unusual, but it happens so I stayed around the area a while and I was finally able to retrieve my Spook after the fish shook it out. I noticed that the line broke right at my knot. It wasn’t till it happened a second time that I realized that the Spook had no slip ring at the tie point and so the flex point from constantly walking the dog was right at the knot. I use nothing but fluorocarbon on Lanier and the stiff fluorocarbon would break down after a period of time, right at the flex point. Twice the Spook had been taken by a fish and ultimately shaken or spit back out and I got the lure back. It reminded me of the old Biblical story of Jonah and the whale so I appropriately name the little chrome spook jr, “Jonah”. On Wednesday morning I took a buddy out in my boat and Jonah was working early while my buddy was getting some action on a chrome Ima Skimmer. The skimmer wasn’t working as well as the Spook jr so finally I told my buddy to tie on my Spook jr and I was going back to the chrome Gunfish 95. I had a brand-new chrome Gunfish, and the sun was popping out through the clouds by late morning. Wouldn’t you know it, my buddy never caught a fish on Jonah after he tied it on, but the little Gunfish put on a clinic for the next hour or so. I dropped my buddy off at lunchtime and came back out for a couple hours before the rain ran me off the lake on Wednesday. I decided to retire little Jonah in favor of the Gunfish and it paid off with some good numbers in the afternoon.
Yesterday I decided to head up lake and check out some of the offshore humps and a few choice points to see if the fish were there. I was pretty impressed with the population of fish offshore already. I’m kinda hoping that this summer turns out to be one of those summers where we have a topwater bite all summer long but that will depend on the bait and water temps. It’s pretty tough to sit in the sweltering heat with a drop shot or slowly cranking a spybait to get bit. I’d much rather spend my summer running and gunning with topwater and a big Igloo jug of ice water than watching paint dry with a fairy wand, but that’s just me. We’ll see how that all plays out, but it really won’t matter in a month anyway because recovery from my knee surgery will put me out of commission through the hottest part of the summer.
I started early yesterday morning, and the fish were really getting with it on the surface. I saw small groups of bluebacks creating wakes as they swam just below the surface, and I saw bass chasing those wakes down and creating some great topwater blow-ups. This week it was more about being in the right place at the right time early in the morning. If I could find where the fish were feeding, I could usually just quietly ease up to the area and wait for the fish to surface chasing the small groups of bluebacks. I could usually pick one or two off with a quick cast of the Gunfish if the fish were on the surface or had gone back down within a few seconds. You need patience for this but waiting for the fish to surface and show themselves can sometimes be a better plan than blind casting or trying to scope and cast to fish when they’re chasing bait, especially if there isn’t much wind very early in the morning. It’s been hard for me to call them up early so sometimes I’ve just been hanging out in an area and waiting.
Running up north yesterday paid off and I put a pretty nice sack together out on the main lake. It was all on the 95 Gunfish in chrome and once the sun came out, it was on with the Gunfish. Sometimes I could call them up and sometimes they would surface near the boat, and I could make a quick cast and snag one or two. Most of the fish were either coming from brush or just roaming around the brush on the ends of points and out on humps. I really didn’t rely on Livescope very much and just using mapping and waypoints as my target areas. By 4 pm yesterday I had put a pretty good sack together again and called it a day.
Today I needed to trailer the boat for maintenance, cleaning and putting a few decals on it. It’s had a pretty good run over the past few months so time for some pampering. I did fish a couple hours before trailering at lunch today and it was shaping up to be another good afternoon with topwater. I caught a few nice fish on the Gunfish again this morning before the traffic started getting bad, so I called it a week.
My two baits that I used this week was a chrome 95 Gunfish and the first half of the week’s success belonged to Jonah the chrome Spook jr. I think that the tempo or cadence that I was using made a lot of difference. I was using a pretty quick “walking the dog” pace with occasionally stopping the bait for a few seconds. Stopping it would trigger a strike if the fish were schooling under the bait. If a fish would miss the bait, I would quicken my retrieve and usually the fish would chase it down and ultimately get hooked. Other times I could kill the bait if they missed it and they would come back and get it. I’m using both baits on a 7ft St Croix Triumph spinning rod with a Shimano Stradic 2500 spinning reel loaded with 20lb Cast Co. Braid and an 8ft leader of 8lb Seagar red label fluorocarbon. Here’s a picture of the chrome Gunfish and Jonah the worn out Spook jr.
The lake started out with surface temps around 77-78 to start the week and today it was just hitting 80 when I came off the lake. The lake is a little above full pool, and I would suspect the corps is generating for a while in late afternoons and evenings. Here’s a few of my memorable fish from this week.
