Category Archives: Fishing Ramblings – My Fishing Blog

Random thoughts and musings about fishing

Inconsiderate Rude Fishermen and Folks In General with Social Media Making Them Worse

    On the inconsiderate, rude fishermen and folks in general thing, social media has also made things worse.  Many “keyboard warriors” out there seem to live to make stupid and or insulting comments. And trolls say things just to try to stir up controversy.  They would never make those kinds of comments in person since they would not want a black eye. 

    When I do my Georgia Outdoor News articles I shoot a short video with the fisherman landing a bass. They then hold it up while telling a little about why and where they are fishing. The videos are about one minute long total. The video goes with my article when it is put online. 

    My editor told me last week a couple of “fishermen” had sent in comments that we were keeping the bass out of the water too long making the video.  I wonder if they would have that problem if I were taking pictures of them? And I would not be surprised if they “boat flip” bass, jerking them out of the water and letting them slam into the bottom of the boat.  But we have to protect bass no matter what, in their opinion. 

I am tempted to tell them “don’t worry, we took the fish home to eat” but that would make me a troll, too. Those folks think it is a deadly sin to kill and eat a bass. But I can be snarky, too!

    I got the following comments online when I went to the Minn Kota users’ group on Facebook asking for help about a trolling motor problem. The pull cable comes through a hole in a cast aluminum block and mine cut a groove in it, which then cut the cable. I asked if there was a fix like a stainless-steel sleeve to go in the hole.   

    Several people said they had the same problem and a couple gave me a link to an aftermarket product that solves it. 

But the following comments range from not responding to the problem to the irrelevant to just plain dumb: 

    “Guys I been working on trolling motors for 28 year’s I’m very aware of everything , if they made the part out of steel then (when ) you run into something it would break every thing instead of the aluminum part, you have to have inexpensive weak spots in everything in lifes gadgets lol.” 

    Later I had this exchange with the same guy: “so if I put a stainless steel grommet made for this problem in the hole it will weaken mine?” his response “Depends on how much you drill out.” No idea where he came up with drilling anything, or about running into things. 

Another guy stated, “its not a piano.” I said “weird response, what do you mean?” but got no response. 

Another suggested I buy a different brand trolling motor for $3500 rather than the less than $25 part to fix mine. And yet a third suggested if I could not keep my equipment repaired I should stop fishing, and go to trowling, whatever that is.  Maybe he thinks I should install stucco.  That from me just asking if anybody had the same problem and a solution for it. 

Although I stated up front the groove had cut my stainless-steel pull cable, I got this genius response: “Maybe they can redesign the parts, so it cuts into the stainless steel cable, and then your cable breaks, and you have something else to bi**h about. Motor looks very well loved. It’s a cheap part and actually if you have any decent repair center around you they will give you one for free and it will take 10 minutes to swap out.”   

I had checked with Minn Kota and they offered to sell me the replacement part, exactly the same as the one that caused the problem, for about $20 

    For the suggestion “You’re supposed to cut the cable short enough so you reach out and pull the cable straight up to release it. That’s straight from Minnkota.” I responded that at my age that ain’t gonna happen.  

I have a hard time just standing on the front of the boat, much less leaning over the trolling motor and front of the boat and pulling a cable straight up.  I guess he did not consider the health and age of some of us, or anything else for that matter. 

Although I did find the part I needed on the Facebook page from a couple of suggestions, I don’t know why I bother. And stuff like this is even more sad when you realize the net and social media are killing print media. 

The Actions of A Few High School Anglers and Boat Captains Turned Me Against Youth Fishing Tournaments

    Fishermen have always been mostly nice, polite considerate folks. There have always been the exceptions, but they were fairly rare and were shunned by most. 

Unfortunately, the huge influx of young tournament fishermen due to the popularity of high school tournaments has produced way too many out there that have no concept of courtesy, rules or safety. And its not just the kids, the adults driving the boats are even worse.

    I always supported youth tournaments, starting a youth tournament club through the Flint River Bass Club  and the Spalding County Sportsman Club. The Flint/Spalding Youth Club was successful, winning the state championship twice. But we emphasized courtesy and safety to them.

    My support changed at a Sportsman Club tournament three years ago at Guntersville. That huge lake is very shallow with thousands of acres of grass beds that have narrow boat channels marked through them. Twice in practice I was run out of those channels by adult “boat captains” driving for high school fishermen.

They did not know or care that the law says boats stay to the right when meeting an oncoming boat, just like in a car. If I had not gone out in the grass to my right they would have hit me.

    More madding but less dangerous, the next day in the tournament I was sitting a short cast off a point with a grassbed on it and had just caught a keeper bass. I was about 50 feet from the edge of the grass and the bank was not far behind the grass. The whole creek was behind me, hundreds of acres of open water. Unfortunately, the boat ramp was down the bank about 300 yards from me.

    I heard a boat out in open water past the point toward the main lake and, due to my experience the day before, looked up.  It was a high school team, two kids in their cute little jerseys, with an adult in the same cute little jersey driving the boat.

    They came off plane about 150 yards from me and I thought they were nice, not making a big wake to hit me while I fished. But then I saw how they were idling, headed right between me and the bank. It would have been even closer for them to go behind me to the ramp, but no, they had to mess up my fishing.

    All three kind of raised their hands in a little wave, but when I took out my phone and started videoing them, they all three looked the other way and would not look back. They kept that pose as they idled through the grass I was fishing.

    That was in a 200 boat Alabama Federation Youth tournament. When I got home I contacted the state tournament director about the courtesy and safety issues. His response was basically they were too big and busy to worry about safety and courtesy. And he said 90 percent of his captains were safe.

    So based on his admission, about 20 boats in his tournament were running around dangerously on a crowded lake.  I am afraid you will read more and more about boating “accidents” that are not really accidents.

    Boat ramps produce good examples of folks not knowing what they are doing and not caring they are blocking the ramp for others.  In my club we can launch 10 boats in less than 15 minutes in the morning and load them up in about 20 minutes in the afternoon.

For years we made fun of those that launched a boat just a few times a year, doing stupid stuff at the ramp. You can watch many videos of that kind of thing online.

    But those that are just stupid or mean that block the ramp for a long time while others are waiting to use it are really the problem. Last month at Lanier I saw a good example of this, and again it was an adult with kids “practicing” for an upcoming tournament.

    The adult pulled in, backed down the ramp then he and three kids got out of the truck. They started getting tackle, coolers, snacks and other stuff out of the truck and putting it in the boat.

    Folks with any sense do that in the parking lot, getting the boat ready then quickly launching it. These folks took about 20 minutes getting their boat ready blocking the ramp before finally getting their boat in the water.

    Even after getting the boat tied up to the dock and parking the truck, the adult walked from the boat to the truck twice getting stuff they forgot before they finally left.

    I wish we could bring back courtesy and sense in many things but none more than fishing.

Tough Day Fishing Until I Found One Sweet Spot

Last Sunday at West Point for me was like the Herman’s Hermits song “Henry the Eighth” “Second verse, same as the first” refrain. I ended up almost dead last in the tournament, but at least I did catch a limit.

    In the Spalding County Sportsman Club February tournament at West Point 15 members and guests fished eight hours, from 7:30 AM – 3:30 PM.  We landed 65 keeper bass, mostly spots longer than the minimum 12-inch limit and a few largemouth longer than the 14 inch limit.  There were 13 five fish limits but two fishermen did not weigh in a fish.

    Lee Hancock repeated his win the week before with five weighing 10.88 pounds and had a 4.48 pound largemouth for big fish.  Doug Acree came in second with five weighing 10.65 pounds, Raymond English was third with five weighing 9.45 pounds and Glenn Anderson came back from a zero last week to place fourth with five at 9.45 pounds.

One of the fishermen that zeroed had boat problems, a live well hose leaked and almost sank his boat so he went home. The other zero said he was fishing behind a “vacuum cleaner,” meaning his partner caught all the fish. Reminded me of me last week, but I was in front of the boat!!

    I started out pretty good, landing a good keeper spot before 8:00 AM then caught short fish and another barely keeper spot. I put the small spots in the other livewell. Since there is no size limit on spots they are legal to keep under 12 inches, but club rules require them to be 12 inches long to weigh in.

    Small spots 10 to 12 inches long are easy to filet and are delicious when fried, baked in mustard/parmesan crust or just baked with a little lemon.  I was able to keep five after the tournament, a couple of them just over 12 inches long, since I didn’t weigh them so there was not penalty for not releasing them alive.

    After catching those three early I tried several places Robert caught fish last week but never had a bite. I don’t know if there were no fish there or they just would not bite for me again. Many of the places I wanted to fish had other fishermen already fishing there. At noon I still had the one decent keeper spot and one barely weigh-in size in the boat.

     A little after noon and stopped on a bank where I have caught fish in the past this time of year.  I saw a small stick just above the water, cast a jig to it and got a bite but missed it. I did feel more brush under the water but it was only five feet deep.

    The next two casts to it resulted in two more missed bites. Then I caught six keeper spots, a keeper largemouth and several short spots in the next 20 minutes!  I had put the spot lock down on my boat and the trolling motor keep the boat in one place while I caught nine or ten fish!  All hit a small jig or shaky head worm.

    That was it, in never got another bite. And my weight of 7.21 was good for only 12th place!

Was It Karma, Bad luck, You weren’t holding your mouth right, Just not your day, Wrong side of the boat That Caused Me To Have A Bad Day?

    “Karma.  Bad luck. You weren’t holding your mouth right. Just not your day. Wrong side of the boat. Different baits.  Different techniques.” Those are just a few of the comments I got about my fishing last Saturday.   

    I had posted “How is it possible to fish 7. 5 hours, get three bites and land one fish while your partner using same baits throwing at rock banks and points catches 12 keepers?????? And caught them on four different baits!!”

    Ignoring the comments that apparently did not see that we were fishing the same way with the same baits, that basically leaves “luck.”  There is some amount of luck when fishing a club tournament.  Although I was obviously around fish all day, they just did not hit my baits, waiting on my partner’s baits, apparently.

    In the Potato Creek Bassmasters February tournament at West Point last Saturday, 21 members fished from 7:30 AM to 3:30 PM to land 73 bass weighing about 143 pounds.  Most of the bass were spots with a 12-inch size limit but there were some largemouth over the 14-inch minimum length. One person did not catch a keeper but eight members landed a five bass limit.   

    Lee Hancock won with five weighing 11.25 pounds and his 4.16 pound largemouth was big fish. My partner Robert Howell, insulting me from the back of my boat, had five weighing 10.66 for second.  Third place was taken by  Russell Prevatt with five at 10.20 pounds and Doug Acree rounded out the top four with five weighing 9.02 pounds.

    I came in 19th out of 21 with one fish weighing 1.55 pounds.  Fishing will definitely keep you humble!

    When Robert caught his first keeper, a small spot that hit an underspin on the first place we stopped, I thought it was a bad start for me. Then an hour or so later we went around a small rock point and he caught his second fish on a shaky head worm. That got me worried.

We went back around that point and I caught my one keeper on a shaky head then Robert got another keeper on his shaky head.  The third pass around that point Robert got his fourth keeper, his biggest at 3.79 pounds, on his shaky head.

Robert and I were fishing the same bait the same way, but he was using lighter line, something I did not think would matter in the stained water, but I dropped back to the same weight line just in case.

On one rocky bank we fished about 150 yards and Robert got his fifth keeper on his shaky head then culled with another keeper. He switched to a wacky rigged Senko and caught three more!  I never had a bite.

A little later Robert caught three more on a Carolina rig, a method and bait I had tried off and on all day. I fished a wacky rigged Senko some, too. He even caught a four pound blue catfish!

It did not seem to matter what I did.  I guess it was just “one of those days” for me, for whatever reason. I just hope it does not stay the same for me in the Sportsman Club tournament at West Point this weekend and I am not making excused for not catching fish!

Is It Legal and Safe To Eat Road Kill?

You may have noticed a lot of dead deer beside the roads lately.  There are two times of year that hitting a deer with your car is more likely.  In November during the rut bucks lose their minds and will chase does out into the road. And the does run without being as carful as usual.

    This time of year making a living in the woods is tough for herbivores.  There is very little green stuff to eat. But if you look, grass often greens up along road right of ways in the winter long before it does in the woods since the road shoulders get a lot of direct sun. That is a meal hungry deer often can’t refuse.

    Be extra careful driving during low light conditions early in the morning and at dusk. And watch out all night long. Don’t disturb a deer’s meal and   don’t disturb your day with a call to your insurance agent.

    But there is an upside to road kills. You can take them home for dinner.

    In 2010 Georgia passed a law allowing us to pick up and keep road kill deer and bears. You must report bears to the state but not deer, as I understand the law.  Some people eat road kill and it is safe and good if you know what you are doing.

    I would be wary of any deer I did not hit or see being hit.  And the way it is hit makes a big difference.  The collision will bruise and damage meat, much like the area around the bullet wound but larger. But even if you have to throw away some of the venison from a road kill, what you get is free and easy!

    How long the deer had been by the road would make a big difference, too, as would time of year. When I shoot a deer I try to field dress it and get it in a cooler as fast as possible.  But if the weather is cold enough, the deer will be ok longer.

Many years ago I shot a doe right at dark. Although I spent two hours looking for it, and got some other club members to help me, we never found it. The blood trail disappeared near a ditch but the deer was not in it. Based on the amount of blood and the sounds I heard after the shot, we did not think the deer had crossed the deep ditch.

The temperature was right at freezing at dark and the low that night was 22 degrees.  I got to the hunting club the next morning just as the sun came up, climbed up into the stand to get a good line on where the deer was when I shot it the night before, and could see it. It was laying on the other side of the ditch, a few feet from where we had searched.

When I field dress the deer it had an “off” smell, not real bad but not quite right. I did not bother keeping the heart and liver like I usually do.  When I carried the deer to the butcher he said it should be ok.

It was, the meat tasted fine when cooked, it had none of the odd taste that I smelled when cleaning it.

Eating road kill is not for everyone but it is legal and safe, if done right.   

Cooking Catfish Stew and Other Fish Recipes

Mama was a great cook as were all my extended family, both blood relatives and in-laws.  I often said Aunt Nancy could cook and old boot and make it taste good. Her husband, Uncle Adron, hunted and fished constantly and she cooked great meals of game and fish.

    One of my favorites was her catfish stew. It really was more like hash, everything was ground up.  Mama would get with her anytime I caught a big catfish and cook up a big pot. I enjoyed many winter meals of it and saltine crackers sitting on my porch at my small trailer at Clarks Hill.

    I tried making it last week with a  big cat I caught in the Sportsman Club tournament at Sinclair.  A few years before she died I asked mama to write some of her recipes down and I have dozens of index cards with her hand written ingredients and instructions.   

Unfortunately, mama’s Alzheimer’s was starting to affect her memory and many of her recipes I have to guess at some steps.  For example, her catfish stew recipe calls for ten strips of fatback but it is never mentioned again in the instructions.

The ten quarts I made are pretty good but not quite right.  I will keep trying.

I love any kind of fish stew or chowder. When I eat out the first thing I check on the menu is the soups and stews.  Fishtales in both Griffin and Zebulon make a good gumbo and a good shrimp chowder.

I make two kinds of fish chowder, one with a red tomato sauce Manhattan style and one with a milk and cream base New England style.  The Manhattan style has a very strong fishy taste and smell, to the point no one would come in my office when I was principal at RESA Academy and took it for lunch.

Both start with bass filets but the Manhattan style I boil what I call backs and wings – the backbones and rib cages left after fileting – and use the strong broth from that process. I pull all the meat off the backbones and “wings” and add the filets to the broth then add other ingredients.

The New England style I just boil diced potatoes, pour off the water and add milk and other ingredients, adding the filets last thing.

I have cooked pretty much everything I have shot my whole life.  BBQed raccoon was  one of the oddest, but Southern Mississippi Beaver was definitely the most unusual, and also the most difficult.  I spent a long time skinning out the hindquarters of the beaver, it was by far the most difficult animal I have ever skinned and gave up on the front legs and shoulders. They were very small anyway.

I have many detailed recipes for game and fish that I make in the Fish Recipes category.

Getting Old and Adapting To New Fishing Realities

If something didn’t hurt when I woke up, I would think I was dead. That is supposed to be joke but it is an all-too-true statement of getting old. 

Our bodies were not designed to last this long. I think my warranty ran out years ago and there are no replacement parts available.  I always said I would rather wear out than rust out, and still believe it, but it gets harder and harder to keep the parts moving and rust free every year.

That is one good thing about fishing, it can be done at any age.  I have had to adjust the way I fish; I can no longer stand with one foot on my trolling motor foot pedal and fish for eight hours in a tournament. Now I slowly get up from the driver’s seat pulling up on a handle on the console, hold on to the windshield and carefully move up sit down on the front seat. But I can still fish!

Backing my boat down the ramp, hopping out and crawling across the truck bed to get to the boat and back it off the trailer is no longer easy.  Without friends in the bass clubs doing it for me I would not be able to fish three tournaments each month.

When I fish by myself I tie a rope to the front of the boat and the other end to the trailer, slowly back the boat off and ease the truck forward, pulling the boat back to the bank with the rope.  That would cause major problems and slow everything down at a tournament.

Another thing I used to love doing makes it  frustrating to not be able to cut, split and stack wood like I did for years. I never really had to do it to heat my house but always enjoyed all parts of it from cutting to burning the wood.

Both my parents died in their mid-70s. When I retired, I hoped, if I was like them, I had about 25 good fishing years left. That was 22 years ago!

Make the most of every day right now before you run out of them!

Getting On the Water When Its Too Cold To Go Fishing

Someone jokingly said “lets go fishing” last Saturday.  With a low of 8 degrees and a high well below freezing at my house, not nearly enough degrees out there, I declined.  But I have been out there fishing in weather about that bad.

    In a January Sportsman Club tournament more than 20 years ago I drove by First National bank at 5:30 AM on the way to Sinclair.  The bank thermometer read 11 degrees.  About a dozen of us showed up at Little River landing just before sunrise but the lake was so low we could not use that ramp.

    Rather than giving up we all headed to Sinclair Marina where the ramp is much steeper and goes out into deeper water.  The first boat was launched with no problem, but when the trailer was pulled out the water running off it froze on the ramp.

    The next person backing down the ramp warned it felt slippery and when he pulled out he had to spin  his tires to get up the ramp.

    By the time I backed down the ramp I started sliding before my trailer tires hit the water.  Luckily I slide straight, and as soon as my van tires hit the water I stopped.  The ice ended at water’s edge.  Then I had to “burn rubber” all the way up the ramp, melting through the thin layer of ice all the way to the top.  Everyone after the first two had the same experience.

    It was miserably cold but I ran the few miles to the Highway 441 Bridge where I felt I had my best chance of getting a bite.  Every cast I had to dip my rod in the water to melt the ice out of the guides. The water temperature was in the upper 30s, as low as I had ever seen it.

Since I knew the bass would be very sluggish I tried casting to the pilings and reeling my crankbait very slowly by it.  I had to slow down to a crawl, just barely keeping the bait moving, but I caught seven keeper bass, enough to win the tournament!

    Luckily the sun on the ramp melted the ice so we had no trouble pulling out. But when I went by the bank on the way home at 5:00 PM it showed the high for the day, 17 degrees!

    A February Flint River tournament at Jackson gave me a thrill but not from catching fish.  When we took off I headed up the lake on plane, running about 40 MPH just before sunrise.

    Suddenly there was a horrible grinding sound. I stopped the boat, just knowing I had blown a power head. But then I saw the sheet of ice running from bank to bank. It was only a half inch thick, but when the boat hit it the sound was awful.  That is one of the few times my bass boat was an ice breaker!

    For some reason on my Christmas trips to Clarks Hill, every year the weather seemed to get much worse after Christmas Day. On year back in the 1990s I woke to howling wind and sleet.  It was not comfortable, and everywhere I tried to fish the wind made it impossible.

I finally pulled in behind an island where a rock pile was protected from the wind and caught an 8.2-pound bass on a crankbait. It was the only bite I had in the four hours I forced myself to fish.   

One year I took Linda to the Augusta Airport the day after Christmas to fly to Salisbury MD to visit her folks.  My dog Merlin and I went back to the lake.  We were staying in my small camping trailer and the only heat was a small electric heater.

During the night Merlin jumped up in bed with me. She always slept on the floor by the bed so that was strange. But when I got up the next morning I saw why, her water bowl on the floor was frozen solid.

The little heater kept it tolerable about three feet above the floor at bed level, but the uninsulated floor was below freezing.

That got me worried. Back then I heated my house on Rebecca Circle with a wood burning insert.  There was no heat in the house while I was gone. I called my neighbor and ask her to check to see if she heard water running. She called back and said she did not hear water but my well pump was running steadily.

I knew what that meant and headed home.  I learned how to solder copper pipe the next day, there were 11 split pipes under the house. The well pump had pumped the well dry and that is why it was still running.

I have been ice fishing one time in my life. One January a hard freeze got my upper pond hard on top.  I went out to the end of my dock, knocked a small hole in the inch thick ice with a pipe, and dropped a piece of fish food on a small hook into the water.

After a few minutes a small bluegill hit it and I landed it through the ice. That remains and probably will always remain the only ice fishing fish I have caught.

I think I will hook the boat up and head to the lake!!

Memories Of Christmas Past Are Melancholic

    Memories of Christmas past are melancholic for me this time of year.  Almost all my memories have hunting and fishing involved and most include family time, too.  But those times are only memories now.

    Most memories when I was in elementary school involve decoration with homemade, nature sourced items.  We sprayed pinecones and sweetgum balls different colors and used them in a variety of ways, from making small “trees” by piling them into round pyramids to making wreaths for the door.

    We collected “smilax,” also known as greenbrier, to outline out front door.  We built manger scenes with pine bark and green pine limbs.  And we made toothpick and ice cream stick decorations.

    One of my jobs from ten years old on, after I was allowed to take my .22 out into the woods by myself, was to shoot down mistletoe. Many of the big oaks in the woods on Dearing Branch had clumps of it, mostly way up in the top. I prided myself on bring down a twig with every shot.

    Through middle and high school I did all that and included hunting trips after a big family lunch.  Daddy often took me out quail hunting when we had pointers. After we stopped trying to find quail, even back then wild coveys were getting harder to find, I would go rabbit hunting with my friend with his pack of beagles or squirrel hunting by myself.

    After I went off to college a trip home usually included all the above. Then after Linda and I got married we would visit my folks in Dearing then drive to Salisbury Md where her folks lived.

    We bought our first bass boat in 1974 and that year I found out bass would bite in late December, addicting me. Most every year after that I would go to out place at Clarks Hill the day school got out and stay by myself until Christmas day.

    By then Linda had a job in a doctor’s office and had just one day off, so I would meet her at my parents house for Christmas dinner then head back to the lake when she headed back to Griffin. I would stay at the lake until I had to come back to Griffin the day before school opened back up.

    Those days were my favorites.  For about ten days each Christmas it was just me and my dog Merlin at the lake. I seldom saw anyone else.  I ate when hungry, slept when sleepy and fished or built brush piles the rest of the time.

    The lake was so uncrowded that, after reading the regulations carefully, I kept my 30-30 in the boat. As long as the boat was not moving from motor power and the deer was not in the water it was legal to shoot one from the boat. If I read the regulations right.

I killed five over a six year period. They were so unused to seeing a boat in the winter that they would just stand and stare at me.  All were young does, but that is what I wanted to shoot for the meat.

    One year I went back to the lake after dinner on Christmas Day and did not see another person for five days. I would not have seen anyone the sixth day but I had to go into town for gas for the boat!

    I caught many bass and learned a lot fishing the lake when it was completely peaceful and the water was down from five to seven feet, exposing rocks and stumps for me to fish later when the water came back up.

    The first brush I put out really fired me up. There was a bare bank with two stumps on it and nothing else for 100 feet. I seldom caught anything on that bank. Up in the edge of the woods, someone had cut a big cedar tree and cut the trunk out for a post.  The remaining top was about 15 feet tall.

    I dragged it to the edge of the water and tied the base to a stump right on the edge of the lake. After flipping it over, the top was out in seven or eight feet of water.

The next morning, I went to that bank and ran a crankbait by the tip of the tree and caught a two-pound bass. That fired me up to put out many more brush piles that year and the next few.

In 1975 I found with my first depthfinder what turned out to be an old underwater roadbed running across a ridge. I took two big cedar trees out there and dropped them on the edge of it, anchoring them in 15 feet of water and 50 feet apart with five-gallon buckets of cement. 

Those trees are still there. They never rot since they are never exposed to air. And I still catch bass out of them on many trips to the lake!

I have great memories of staying at the lake during Christmas but, unfortunately, after my parents died in 2000, I have a hard time going to the lake and staying by myself. I get way too melancholy remembering all the spring and summer trips with them there.

I guess the ghosts of the boat club and all the memories get to me when I am all alone.

Reading About Fishing Can Give You Tips To Help Catch Fish

    Sometimes ideas that help catch fish come from reading about others’ fishing trips.  That is why I try to give some details of where what and how when I am lucky enough to catch a bass. 

    Years ago on a Saturday afternoon before a Sportsman Club night tournament at Jackson I was reading a fishing report from a Texas lake to post on my website.  It said a jig and pig was working well for bass at night. 

    I did not have one tied on for the tournament but went out and rigged a rod and jig for fishing.  That night, with less than two hours left to fish, I had one small keeper in my livewell and was not very happy. 

    I decided to try the jig and pig, I had not thrown it all night. But in the next hour I caught five keepers, culling the one in the livewell and winning the tournament. 

    That jig and pig worked well during night tournaments for the next four years helping me win or place second. Then the club decided they would rather fish during the day when it is hot, there is lots of boat traffic on the lake and the fish didn’t bite.  So we stopped fishing at night when it is cool, there is little boat traffic and the fish do bite. 

    Reading about other fishing trips almost got me into serious trouble when I was 19 years old and a sophomore at UGA.  An article in Outdoor Life magazine talked about the good trout fishing downstream of the Hartwell dam on the Savannah River. 

    I skipped classes one Monday and drove over there early that morning. When I got near the river I stopped at a small store/bait shop to ask for information.  

The owner showed me an ice chest full of rainbow trout and said his two sons caught them that morning before school.  He said the hatchery truck dumped fresh trout in the river at the old steel bridge and told me to turn at the next right and it would take me to the bridge and I could fish there. 

I bought a can of kernel corn since he said that is what they were hitting, they were used to eating pellet food in the hatchery.  When I got to the bridge about 10:00 AM I found a place to park and crawled down the steep bank to the edge of the river. It was almost a half mile wide there and there were streams and rivulets running over an expanse of flat rocks all the way across, with scattered bigger pools of water. 

I tied on a #2 Mepps spinner and put a kernel of corn on one of the hooks. I waded upstream of the bridge casting to small streams and pools in the rocks, and caught a limit of ten rainbow trout before lunch. 

After going back to the truck, putting my fish on ice and eating a sandwich I started fishing downstream below the bridge to look at new places.  After about an hour I had caught two trout and had them on a stringer attached to a belt loop. I was right in the middle of the expanse of rocks, maybe 200 yards from the bank and that far downstream of the bridge. 

A car went over the bridge and the driver blew the horn. I turned and waved and turned back to fish, but something was not right. Looking back upstream there was a fog bank rolling down the river almost to the bridge. 

I realized the Corps of Engineers had released water at the Hartwell dam about four miles upstream. The ice cold water rolling down the river caused the fog. 

I grabbed my fish and took off running across the slippery rocks as fast as I could. When I got to the bank I was standing in water about ankle deep.  By the time I put my rod and can of corn on the steep bank and hooked my stringer to a bush, the water was up to my waist and I had to hold on to a bush to fight the current! 

Looking back to where I had been a few seconds before, a torrent of ice cold water several feet deep rushed across the rocks. If it had caught me there is no way I would have survived. Whoever blew that car horn saved my life. 

I stopped at the store and the owner told me someone had drowned there the week before after being caught by the current. I told him I thought the Corps blew a siren at the dam to warn folks when they released water and he said they used to but locals complained about the noise. 

I “thanked” him for warning me and left, glad to be alive. 

Read fishing tips and try them but be careful!