i wish this 60 degree weather had been here Sunday. Many folks are claiming this weather is unusual for January. But fouri years ago I wrote about how wram it was and said: “I even heard one talking head using the most over used word in our vocabulary right now – “unprecedented.”
On Sunday. January 21, 1967, my senior year in high school, Harold and I talked at church about how warm it was and that we needed to go water skiing. We wanted to be the first ones to go skiing that year. As soon as church was over, we went home, changed clothes and grabbed some extra jeans and shirts.
On the way to the lake WBBQ radio station in Augusta said it was 71 degrees and it was sunny. We got to Raysville Boat Club where my family’s ski boat was tied under a boat shed. As we pulled up to the lake, we saw one of our friends that had skipped church that day out of the water skiing.
Harold and I both skied, but we were not the first that year.
There have been many other very warm Januarys over the years, and many very cold ones. And there will be many more as the weather changes year to year.
This is a great time to join a bass club. The Flint River Bass Club meets the first Tuesday of the month and fishes our tournament the following Sunday. Potato Creek Bassmasters meets the Monday following the first Tuesday and fishes that Saturday. Spalding County Sportsman Club meets the third Tuesday each month and fishes the following Sunday. All three clubs have some two-day tournaments, too.
Annual dues are $25 in Flint River and $50 in the other two. Monthly tournament entry fees are $25 to $30 with a variety of pots, like daily big fish at $5, that are voluntary.
We have a lot of fun at the meetings discussing fishing and telling some true stories about it. Tournaments are fun competition, mostly for bragging rights since entry fees are low and there is not enough money involved to really get serious about it.
There are many of us in each of the three clubs that often fish alone, so there is always room for new members without a boat. If interested in joining one of the clubs call me at 770-789-6168 or email ronnie@fishing-about.com. —
Last Sunday ten members of the Flint River Bass Club fished our first tournament of the year at Jackson. The weather was great for this time of year, but the muddy 52-degree water seemed to turn off the bass.
In eight hours of casting, we brought 15 12-inch keeper bass weighing about 22 pounds to the scales. Ten of them were spots. There was one limit and five members zeroed.
Doug Acree won with five weighing 8.09 pounds and said he caught a bunch of bass, culling in the first hour of the tournament, while the rest of us struggled to catch a keeper. Don Gober had three at 4.12 pounds for second, Niles Murray placed third with two at 4.04 pounds and his 3.21 pound largemouth was big fish. My three weighing 3.72 pounds was good for fourth and Alex Gober had two at 2.19 for fifth.
Niles fished with me since his new boat has not arrived. We tried a little bit of everything that morning. Niles hooked a nice two-pound bass on a spinnerbait that came off right at the net first thing.
I missed a fish that hit a jig head worm because of my stupidity. I had switched reels around and forget to check the drag. When I tried to set the hook, the spool just spun around, and I did not hook the fish.
I did land a keeper spot on a crankbait off a boat ramp and another one on a spinnerbait in a blowdown. Then about 11:00 I slowed down and caught my third keeper on a shaky head worm on a rocky point.
I made the mistake of picking at Niles a little since he didn’t have a fish in the livewell and I had three. Then he caught the three pounder on a jig on a rocky point and caught up with me with one fish. He added his second keeper with about an hour left to fish. It hit the jig on a point.
We both missed a lot of bites. I caught two 11-inch spots and a couple of times, when I set the hook on the shaky head, I brought in half a worm, a good sign it was a little fish.
It was a fun day overall. I am looking forward to the rest of the club tournaments this year.
Research Finds Culling Sharks Not The Answer To Lost Tarpon Catches
By The Fishing Wire
First-of-its-kind study led by UMass Amherst suggests tarpon time on angler’s line determines likelihood of catch being eaten by hammerheads
Amherst, MA – In wave-making research recently published in Marine and Coastal Fisheries, a team of researchers, led by biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, has quantified the rate at which great hammerhead sharks are eating Atlantic tarpon hooked by anglers at Bahia Honda, Florida—one of the prime tarpon fishing spots in the Florida Keys.
Called the “depredation rate,” the team found that 15.3% of tarpon that were hooked by anglers and fought for more than five minutes were eaten while still on the line. But the researchers also show that this is not necessarily a sign that the ecosystem is out of balance. To the contrary, increased reports of depredation are to be expected, especially as great hammerhead sharks, listed as critically endangered by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), are seeing their population stabilize in the southeastern United States; the result of decades of conservation and management efforts. At the same time, angling is an increasingly popular sport. Which means that there is a greater chance for human-fish-shark encounters. To help manage the health of both the tarpon fishery and the hammerhead population, the researchers urge solutions that don’t impact either species.
Tarpon are one of the most iconic saltwater fish in the Southeastern and Gulf states. Many an angler spends their life dreaming of hooking a tarpon that could easily exceed 100 pounds, which are known to fight fiercely, often leaping entirely clear of the water in their efforts to shake a hook. The tarpon fishery, which extends from Texas to the Carolinas in the U.S., is, by some estimates, a multi-million-dollar-per-year industry, and the fish is tied deeply to local culture.
Yet, despite the legendary toughness of the species, the tarpon is listed as “vulnerable” by the IUCN, and their populations seem to have been affected by fishing, degraded water quality and habitat loss. Recently, guides have been increasingly reporting that sharks are taking a bigger bite out of the tarpon catch in recent years, and may, in fact, pose a risk to the species’ survival. But, until now, there’s been no hard data on just what the depredation rate might be, which makes it difficult to make informed conservation decisions, for either the tarpon or the hammerheads.
To arrive at the depredation rate, and then to track both the tarpons’ and sharks’ yearly movements through a specific area, you need a few things: high-tech acoustic telemetry equipment, stout fishing gear and a comfy lawn chair.
Acoustic telemetry has recently revolutionized scientists’ ability to track migratory marine species. The technique involves anchoring an acoustic receiver in the water and implanting a small transmitter into whatever it is you want to track. In this case, lead author Grace Casselberry, a postdoctoral researcher at UMass Amherst, and her colleagues deployed 16 receivers in a gridded array in the Bahia Honda Channel. They then caught and tagged 51 tarpon and 14 hammerhead sharks. Over the course of more than two years, every time one of the tagged tarpon or hammerheads swam within range of the receiver, the receiver would log that individual animal’s unique ID, date and time.
Then came the lawn chair. “I sat in that chair for two months,” says Casselberry, “watching all day long through binoculars and a camera with a long lens as people fished. Every time someone hooked tarpon, I recorded the time of day, the current, whether the tide was going in or out, which boats were fishing, how many anglers were in the area, how long it took them to bring the tarpon to their boat and whether or not a hammerhead ate the fish. I saw a total of 394 tarpon hooked.”
With all that data, the researchers revealed that the longer the angler fought their tarpon, the more likely it was to be eaten, and that when the fight lasted for more than five minutes, there was a 15.3% chance that the tarpon would be snatched by a hammerhead. These depredations most often occur on an outgoing current, which was also supported by the acoustic telemetry data that showed the hammerheads occupied a smaller area within the channel corresponding to where most tarpon are hooked and fought. The team also found that tarpon tend to congregate in Bahia Honda during the spring, pre-spawning seasons—and the hammerheads know it. So do the anglers.
“Bahia Honda has most likely been a place where sharks and tarpon have congregated for a very long time,” says Andy Danylchuk, senior author and professor of fish conservation at UMass Amherst. “If there was less depredation in recent memory, that is likely due to the fact that the population of great hammerheads was dangerously low.” But fishing pressure has also increased in recent decades. “There are more sharks in the water and also more hooks in the water,” Danylchuk continues, “which is the perfect recipe for more shark-fish-human encounters.” In fact, depredation is a growing issue in the United States, as evidenced by the recent SHARKED Act put before Congress to help find solutions.
“It has taken 30 years to get the hammerheads to the point where they are just starting to recover,” says Casselberry, “and all that work could be undone if we start killing sharks indiscriminately.”
“There’s some evidence that the hammerheads are pregnant females,” adds Danylchuk, “and if they are culled, it could decimate their numbers.”
None of this means that anglers need to stop fishing for tarpon in Bahia Honda, but it does mean that conservation efforts, of both tarpon and hammerheads, should be informed by solutions that don’t impact the tarpon, the hammerheads, or the anglers. Casselberry and her colleagues suggest that anglers use fishing gear that will allow them to land tarpon faster, thus reducing fight times and the opportunity for depredation. They should also avoid fishing during the outgoing tide, which is when most depredation events occur. Anglers who use fish-finders should monitor for sharks and consider relocating when hammerheads are in the area.
“We are advocating for anglers to think of themselves as part of the ocean ecosystem, rather than working against it,” says Casselberry.
Update on this article first posted in 2013. I now mostly use Strike King Bitsy Flips for the bigger hooks. I won a club tournament and had big fish on one last November, won another and had big fish in early January and came in fourth in a mid january tournament this year. All my keepers came on a Bitsy Flip.
I had a problem with skirts coming apart on one group of black and blue jigs I bought last year ago. i had bought a dozen green pumpkin and a dozen black and blue and used the green pumpkin with no trouible. But when water muddied up last weeek ai switched to black and blue and the skirt would come off after a few casts. I did land two keepers to win before running out of them and switching to another brand.
When I contacted Strike King and Lews support trying to buy replacement skirts for the six jig heads in my boat, I was sent a gift card to cover replacing the defective jigs. Great service that you seldom find now-a-days!!
Original article:
For the past couple of years I have had two baits, a jig head worm and a Bitsy Bug jig with a Creepy Crawler trailer, that are my go-to choices most days when fishing tournaments. As I get older I have to fish slower and those baits don’t wear me out during a tournament. But they catch fish under almost all conditions.
I rig the Bitsy Bug jig and Creepy Crawler trailer on a seven foot medium heavy St. Croix rod and Kast King reel spooled with 10 to 12 pound test Sun Line fluorocarbon. The light line suits the way I fish the bait and will handle any bass I hook. And I think I get more hits on the light fluorocarbon line than I do on heavier line.
In clear to lightly stained water I use a pumpkin jig and a green pumpkin skirt. I always dip the tails of the twin tail trailer in JJ’S Magic chartreuse dye. In stained water I go with a black jig and blue trailer, but I dip those tails, too. I think the chartreuse flash of the tail looks like a bream fin and the strong garlic scent may help get bites and make the bass hold the bait longer.
The small jig and pig works year round on both largemouth and spotted bass. Most of the lakes I fish in middle Georgia have populations of spotted bass now and they are aggressive and tend to bite better after a cold front. The smaller jig and pig is just right for them but largemouth love it, too.
I fish the jig and pig around all kinds of structure and cover, mostly in shallow water. Since I usually fish it in less than 15 feet of water my favorite weight is the three sixteenths ounce jig but I will go to a quarter ounce jig if there is current or wind. The lighter jig comes through rocks and brush better than heavier jig, too.
Normally I cast the jig, let it sink to the bottom and sit a few seconds, than pull it up off the bottom a couple of inches and let it fall back. When I hit cover I will jiggle the bait and raise it up and down when over a rock or limb. On smoother bottoms like clay or peagravel I slide it along, moving it as slowly as I can while still making the tails wave and wiggle
Another trick is to “stroke” the jig, ripping it up off the bottom two feet and letting it fall back. This action looks like a fleeing bait and will often trigger a reaction strike. This is a good tactic around boat docks. Let the jig fall by a post, rip it up and let it fall back, then swim it away just off the bottom.
The one thing I don’t like about the Bitsy Bug jig is the light hook in it. switching to the Bitsy Flip solved this problem) I would prefer a bigger, stronger hook. With the rod, reel and line I use I do keep my drag set fairly loose so it will slip on the hook set. That keeps me from breaking the line and also does not bend the light hook.
It is important to rig the trailer on the hook so the tails are parallel with the head. I change the trailer often since they get torn and won’t stay straight on the hook. After catching a bass the trailer is often torn and won’t stay straight. One trick is to rotate the trailer 180 degrees after one side gets torn by the hook so you can keep using it, but change it when both sides get torn.
Give the Bitsy Bug and Creepy Crawler a try. Smallmouth love it, too. Try it my way or fish it your favorite way. Let me know how you like it.
My Fishing Memories From Clarks Hill Are Bittersweet
A few years ago on Thursday I drove to my place at Clarks Hill, got up Friday morning and drove up to Hartwell to get information for my January Georgia Outdoor News Map of the Month article. Back at Clarks Hill Saturday morning, I got my first cup of coffee and went out on the deck at my mobile home at Raysville Boat Club and looked at the lake.
Christmas is a time for reminiscing and sitting there took me back over many years of spending Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays at Clarks Hill. Memories flashed across my mind like the lights of a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.
Saturday morning was the kind of day I love, not a ripple disturbed the reflecting pool of the lake surface. The only sound was an occasional craw of a crow or the bark of a squirrel, disturbed in his search for breakfast. I was at peace with the world.
Weather always played an important of my trips. One of the best, about 30 years ago, an unusually warm winter found me fishing in jeans with no shirt or shoes. The water was 61 degrees and big fish were active. I caught six largemouth weighing more than five pounds each and five hybrids weighing six pounds each in three days on Shadraps.
The other extreme was one winter when my dog Merlin woke me at midnight jumping in bed with me in my small camper. That was unusual, she always slept on the floor. The next morning I found out why. Her water bowl on the floor was frozen solid. The small electric heater kept the air tolerable from a couple feet off the floor to the ceiling but could not keep up with the 5-degree low that night.
I called my neighbor back in Griffin and asked her to check to see if she heard water running under my house from burst pipes. She said she did not but the well pump was running. I came home fast and found the well had run dry from pumping water out of 11 holes in pipes. I learned to solder copper pipe that afternoon.
Another winter on Christmas Eve the wind was howling and it was sleeting. I tried to fish but it was bad, so I went behind an island to get out of the wind. I caught an eight- and one-half pound bass on a jig from a rockpile there. After landing it I figured I had had enough and went in to show it off.
Some foggy mornings I unhooked my boat battery charger, pushed off from the bank, put the trolling motor in the water and started fishing. As soon as I got a few feet from the bank everything disappeared in a white haze. Outlines of trees were the only indication anything was near.
I could image I was the only person in the world. The fog dampened even the sounds of crows and squirrels, and the only disturbance was the whirr of my reel and splash of the lure as I cast. Sometimes the sound of a jumping bass, barely seen in the fog, added to the excitement.
I loved being up there by myself. Back then nobody fished during the winter. I had the lake and boat club to myself. One year I went to the boat club Christmas afternoon after dinner in town with my family. For a week I slept when I was sleepy, ate when I was hungry and all the rest of the time I either fished or built brush piles.
That year I did not see another person for five days. The only reason I saw people the sixth day was a trip to town for boat gas.
I had never built brush piles but had heard how effective they can be for fishing. A bank I like to fish near my trailer was bare clay except for two stumps about 50 feet apart. I could usually get a bite by the stumps if they were in the water, but that year the lake was down seven feet and the water just touched the outside edge.
Up on the bank someone had cut down some big cedar trees, cut the trunk out for posts and left the big bushy tops. One afternoon I drug two to the edge of the water, tied the base of the trunk to the stump and flipped the top out into four or five feet of water.
The next morning I cast a crankbait to the tip of the trees and caught two pound largemouth from each.
An old roadbed crosses the creek, rising on a hump out in the middle. There are three-foot drops, from 12 to 15 feet deep, on each side of it where it was cut into the former hill. I pulled two of the cedar tops out there and finally got them to sink by tying 5-gallon buckets of cement to them. I put them right on the edge of the drops about 100 feet apart.
I caught fish out of them for years, including an eight and one quarter pound bass one winter. Three years ago, I won a club tournament fishing those same two trees, they are still there. Cedar does not rot when completely submerged under water.
I have many more fishing and hunting memories from this time of year at the lake, but those are for another time.
So far this ice fishing season, I’ve been thinking more about ice fishing than actually doing it. Hopefully that will change soon. Looking through my ice fishing equipment reminds of some of the things that I’ve discovered about catching fish through the ice. The action that we put on a lure can play a big role in our catching success.
At times lots of action and noise can attract a fish to our bait. When this is the case, a technique called “pounding” can be the ticket. “Pounding” is accomplished when an angler uses a heavier lure, usually a spoon but sometimes a jig, and aggressively bounces it off the bottom. When the spoon hits the bottom it makes noise as it bounces off rocks, or it creates a “dust cloud” when it lands on a softer bottom. Either way, it gets a nearby fish’s attention. Pounding is often productive in stained water or around rocks. A fish might be on one side of a large rock while your bait is on the other side of the rock. By bouncing your bait off the rock, it gets the fish’s attention. A spoon with rattles, something like a Rattlin’ P.T. Spoon, is often better. The rattles along with the pounding is going to get a fish’s attention. Pounding works well for walleyes or perch.
Sometimes the fish want a bait that’s almost motionless. I learned that a few February’s ago on an ice fishing trip to South Dakota. A severe cold front with cloudless blue skies had blown in. The fast fishing of yesterday was replaced with terribly slow fishing the next day. Sonar revealed that perch would come in and look at our tiny baits, then swim slowly away. We tried different colors, different sizes, and a variety of actions. Finally, in frustration, when the next perch came in to investigate my bait as I sat in the portable shelter, I rested my elbow of the arm that I was jigging with on my knee and held the bait as motionless as possible. After several seconds of observation, the perch gently sucked in my jig. Several others followed. In recent years, successful ice anglers have been tipping their jigs with Maki plastic baits. These baits are very soft and wiggle just the right way when the fish, mostly panfish, want a bait with minimal action.
Last thing. In years past, anglers have often preferred bigger hooks on their baits. The thought is that bigger hooks mean better hooking percentages. In the summer when we’re moving our baits faster, bigger hooks are a good idea. But in some situations smaller hooks can be a very good idea. In the summer when live bait is being used, a smaller hook enables the live bait to move more freely and be more appealing to fish.
In the winter, smaller treble hooks on spoons and some other baits have been producing better catches than similar baits with bigger trebles. The Tikka Flash employs a much smaller than ordinary treble, and hooking percentages are up significantly. It’s easier for a fish to inhale the bait since the hook is smaller.
Those of us who like to fish are fortunate to have access to lots of fishing information. We need to be open to new ideas that might conflict with our usual way of doing things when we go fishing. When we start doing that, we’ll start catching even more fish.
The laughing, haunting sound of a loon floating across the water at dusk was a sound I read about but did not think I would ever hear. Then, years ago at Christmas, I heard something I had never heard before while fishing at Clarks Hill and guessed it was a loon.
I tracked the sound down to a gray and black bird swimming low in the water. I watched as it dived, looking for dinner. I could not believe how long it could stay down and how far it would go on one dive.
Loons are common on area lakes in the winter now. As their populations increased, they migrated farther south looking for ice free water where they could feed. I still love hearing them while fishing, and often use them to locate schools of baitfish and bass.
Gulls and terns are also common on our lakes in the winter and can help find schools of fish. I have caught many bass, stripers and hybrids by running to an area where gulls and terns were diving from the air, feeding on injured herring and shad from fish feeding under the water.
Gulls and terns come to our lakes to escape rough weather on the coast. There are many more of them during the winter. Gulls are bigger and watching them is more consistent for finding fish since they usually don’t soar along watching for bait near the surface like terns will do.
I call terns “Judas terns” since following them is often frustrating. Unless they circle and concentrate on one spot, you can follow them a long way without finding any fish. But a circling group of either of the white and gray terns and gulls is a good sign to go fish there.
A few years ago in a January tournament at Oconee I saw a couple of big white birds diving to the water surface. I was surprised and had to get closer to confirm they were pelicans. I had never seen those birds on a lake. I guess they came inland to escape a storm. I have seen many pelicans, from one up close on a dock at Islamorada, Florida to watching them dive on schools of baitfish in the Sea of Cortez.
Travel has exposed me to many birds this country Georgia boy never expected to see. I have pictures of me squatting on the ice in Antarctica with penguins waddling by close enough to touch and have watched wild parrots in trees along the Amazon River in the rain forest. Watching an albatross soar behind a ship without flapping its wings for many minutes is amazing.
But local birds are my favorites. One year while driving home from Jekyll Island I saw a bird soaring over the surrounding pines that made me stop and pull to the side of the road. I watched it for several minutes, trying to figure out what it was.
I got out my bird book and found out it was a scissor tail swallow. Its long, forked tail feathers were very distinctive. They are native to the Southeast but rare. Their contrasting black and white markings on the bird makes them stand out, and they are a little bigger than a crow. They soar low over trees looking for food in the branches.
Canada geese don’t really migrate through Georgia and I had never seen wild ones here until the Georgia DNR started a stocking program. They brought in adult Canadas and clipped their wings so they could not fly. Some big wire enclosures were built on coves on Clarks Hill and they were kept there.
As they raised young and increased in numbers, they were allowed to leave the pens. Nests were built on stilts to protect eggs from predators and numbers increased a lot. Since the young had not been taught to migrate, they stayed here year-round.
One night sitting on my deck at Clarks Hill on a moonlit night I heard the haunting honking of geese as they flew by. It gave me chill bumps since I associated that sound with northern wilderness areas. I had heard domestic geese honk but this was very different, hearing it out on the lake at night.
Geese have become so common now it is unusual when you don’t hear and see them. I now call them “pigs with wings” since their droppings leave a mess where they feed and I have seen some docks where they roost at night so covered with droppings you could not step on it without stepping in it.
Kildeers fascinated me when I was growing up. They were common in our big field but I could never get close enough to them to get a good look at them. Then one day I was able to sneak up on one and shoot it as it flew off the ground.
It was a beautiful bird with brown and white markings with gold highlights. I satisfied my curiosity and never tried to shoot another one.
Birds are amazing, especially when you learn amore about them. I used to carry several bird identification guides with me everywhere I went, but not all that information is available with a few taps on your phone!
Back at Clarks Hill Saturday morning, I got my first cup of coffee and went out on the deck at my mobile home at Raysville Boat Club and looked at the lake.
Christmas is a time for reminiscing and sitting there took me back over many years of spending Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays at Clarks Hill. Memories flashed across my mind like the lights of a fireworks display on the Fourth of July.
Saturday morning was the kind of day I love, not a ripple disturbed the reflecting pool of the lake surface. The only sound was an occasional craw of a crow or the bark of a squirrel, disturbed in his search for breakfast. I was at peace with the world.
Weather always played an important of my trips. One of the best, about 30 years ago, an unusually warm winter found me fishing in jeans with no shirt or shoes. The water was 61 degrees and big fish were active. I caught six largemouth weighing more than five pounds each and five hybrids weighing six pounds each in three days on Shadraps.
The other extreme was one winter when my dog Merlin woke me at midnight jumping in bed with me in my small camper. That was unusual, she always slept on the floor. The next morning I found out why. Her water bowl on the floor was frozen solid. The small electric heater kept the air tolerable from a couple feet off the floor to the ceiling but could not keep up with the 5-degree low that night.
I called my neighbor back in Griffin and asked her to check to see if she heard water running under my house from burst pipes. She said she did not but the well pump was running. I came home fast and found the well had run dry from pumping water out of 11 holes in pipes. I learned to solder copper pipe that afternoon.
Another winter on Christmas Eve the wind was howling and it was sleeting. I tried to fish but it was bad, so I went behind an island to get out of the wind. I caught an eight- and one-half pound bass on a jig from a rockpile there. After landing it I figured I had had enough and went in to show it off.
Some foggy mornings I unhooked my boat battery charger, pushed off from the bank, put the trolling motor in the water and started fishing. As soon as I got a few feet from the bank everything disappeared in a white haze. Outlines of trees were the only indication anything was near.
I could image I was the only person in the world. The fog dampened even the sounds of crows and squirrels, and the only disturbance was the whirr of my reel and splash of the lure as I cast. Sometimes the sound of a jumping bass, barely seen in the fog, added to the excitement.
I loved being up there by myself. Back then nobody fished during the winter. I had the lake and boat club to myself. One year I went to the boat club Christmas afternoon after dinner in town with my family. For a week I slept when I was sleepy, ate when I was hungry and all the rest of the time I either fished or built brush piles.
That year I did not see another person for five days. The only reason I saw people the sixth day was a trip to town for boat gas.
I had never built brush piles but had heard how effective they can be for fishing. A bank I like to fish near my trailer was bare clay except for two stumps about 50 feet apart. I could usually get a bite by the stumps if they were in the water, but that year the lake was down seven feet and the water just touched the outside edge.
Up on the bank someone had cut down some big cedar trees, cut the trunk out for posts and left the big bushy tops. One afternoon I drug two to the edge of the water, tied the base of the trunk to the stump and flipped the top out into four or five feet of water.
The next morning I cast a crankbait to the tip of the trees and caught two pound largemouth from each.
An old roadbed crosses the creek, rising on a hump out in the middle. There are three-foot drops, from 12 to 15 feet deep, on each side of it where it was cut into the former hill. I pulled two of the cedar tops out there and finally got them to sink by tying 5-gallon buckets of cement to them. I put them right on the edge of the drops about 100 feet apart.
I caught fish out of them for years, including an eight and one quarter pound bass one winter. Three years ago, I won a club tournament fishing those same two trees, they are still there. Cedar does not rot when completely submerged under water.
I have many more fishing and hunting memories from this time of year at the lake, but those are for another time.
As I threw another log on the fire, my mind wandered over the past 40 years of deer camp here. When I first joined, the “old” men mostly stayed in camp and didn’t hunt much. For several years “Captain” was the old man in charge of the fire. Now it is my “old man” job and I don’t leave camp much.
After spending almost half my life in the club, memories are plentiful. Hundreds of nights sitting around the fire, eating parched or boiled peanuts and sharing stores, some of them mostly true, revive past experiences. And the same ones are told over and over, drawing amazed reactions from young members and smiles from us older ones.
And we celebrate and morn lost members. Many of the young members fathers I watched grow up and become men over the years. They pass on their traditions to their children, just as their fathers passed them on to them. The never-ending cycle of outdoor and hunting life.
Many of the stories are funny and draw laughs every year. Tales of cut shirt tails, stories of first blood, memories of members walking to their stand in a circle in the dark and ending back up at camp, all bring chuckles.
One of mine is finding the perfect place for my climbing stand, easing up the tree in the dark then staring another club member in the eyes in a tree only 30 feet away. Or the time I helped build a permanent stand with a friend, only to have him not be able to hunt it opening day. He doesn’t laugh much when I mention the big nine point I killed from that stand on opening day, but everybody else does.
Four wheelers stuck in the creek are both funny and scary. Turning a four-wheeler upside down on top of you in a creek is not funny until after you are safe. It is funny now to remember the work of the six of us laboring for hours to get it out, but at the time it was only exhausting.
Some of the scariest stories are the one or two about stands breaking and tumbling members to the ground. Fortunately, none ended up with serious injuries, just injured pride.
Many of my memories revolve around a stand I have hunted for more than 30 years. It is a simple stand, 2x4s nailed between two sweetgum trees about 24 inches apart 20 feet off the ground with a 16-inch piece of plywood nailed on top of them. Spikes driven into the trees 30 years ago are sticking out barely enough for a boot hold now.
The stand has been sweetened over the years. A small shelf is placed in the perfect position to hold my coffee cup. Sticks cross the area above my head, placed just right for a black plastic bag to stretch over and protect me from rain. And a nail holds my hanging rifle in position to raise it without excess movement.
I found the place for the stand by accident. I found a creek hillside that seemed to be perfect for a stand, near the very end of one of our roads. I loaded materials to build it in the truck then headed to the end of the road.
Before toting everything through the woods, I remembered hunting too close to the other club member so I walked around a little. Sure enough, there was another stand, hidden in an oak tree, looking over the same hillside.
I went back to the truck disappointed and started driving slowly back out, watching the ground on either side of the road carefully. When I spotted a trail crossing it, I stopped and followed the trail though some pines to where they stopped at the edge of hardwoods. There was a slight opening along the edge from an old logging road.
Careful inspection proved there were no other stands for at least 200 yards in any direction. I built the stand with help from a fellow club member. The first morning I hunted it I was shocked how close it was to Highway 18. The bends in the road fooled me. I could glimpse 18 wheelers traveling along the road, and their tire noise often make it hard to hear.
Even with the noise problem I have killed more than 40 deer from that stand.
Some of those kills I was very proud of, some not so much. One day I glimpsed a deer facing me about 50 yards away at the very end of the old logging road. Young pines hid part of it but I could clearly see its head and chest since it was facing me. I shot it with my 30-30 in the chest and it dropped.
When I got to it, I was shocked how small it was. Although it was doe day and I was hunting meat, I wanted a bigger deer since the limit was two a year back then. I was able to pick up the 40-pound yearling by its back legs and carry it over my shoulder, not drag it out.
I quickly gutted and skinned it and took it home, since I did not want to take it back to camp and get kidded about its size. I quartered that deer, cut its backbone in half and froze it. Each piece fit in a big crockpot! But it was some of the most tender venison I have ever eaten!
I was very proud of a big ten point I shot from that stand, but I really didn’t put any effort into finding it, it just happened to wander by me. It fell near the camp road and I drove to it. As I drug it to the truck and started loading it, another member stopped on his way out of the woods and helped load it.
He gave me a sour look and said “I have been hunting that deer all week!”
Don’t miss a chance to make memories in a deer camp.
March 22–24. Grand Lake O the Cherokees, Tulsa, OK.
The 2024 Bass Masters Classic will be held March 22–24. Grand Lake O the Cherokees, Tulsa, OK.. This is the biggest tournament of the year on the pro circuit.
I was quoted in Sports Illustrated a few years ago saying, “The Super Bowl is the Bassmasters Classic of football,” a twist on the usual comment. I had no idea a writer for that magazine was sitting near me on the bus going to practice day on the lake for the pros.
One thing some don’t understand about the fan support of pro fishermen. We are different from other pro sports. We may watch our favorite pro catch bass on TV today then go out and try to catch them ourselves tomorrow, using the same baits and equipment the pro used.
Other pro sports fans are viewers only. They may have played the sport years ago in high school or even college, but almost none will be competing on the field tomorrow. Bass fishermen keep competing all their lives.
I have been lucky enough to spend time in the boat with many of the pros, including four of the 53 competing in this year’s Classic. After hours of watching how they fish and questioning them on what they are doing and why they chose to do that, it always amazes me that they fish just like the rest of us. They just catch more and bigger fish.
The Bassmasters Classic is a big event. I will not be able to attend this year but a trip to attend the huge outdoor show, meet the pros and watch weigh-ins would be a great way to spend some winter days. Then you can come home and go fishing with the baits and equipment you bought at a discount at the show, fishing just like them.
Top 9+ ChatterBait® Commandments – A Masterclass in Bladed Jig Fishing
By The Fishing Wire
Ladson, SC – Any time your angling goals include personal best bass or top-10 tournament checks, chunking and winding a ChatterBait® bladed jig carves the straightest wake to success. It’s a simple, self-evident fact that continues to prove itself across North America’s waterways, almost every day of the year.
In the years since the Original ChatterBait ascended to dominance on the national bass scene, a new lure-category sensation emerged, evolved and snowballed catch rates. Newer, refined Z-Man® bladed jigs offered subtle variations in vibration and unpredictable hunting action, as well as delivering select situational tools, such as the ChatterBait Elite EVO™ and WillowVibe™, which shine both shallow and deep.
Seems like a no-brainer now. But the enchantment of a ChatterBait and its propensity to produce epic outings often depend on the details. A quick change in the cadence. Reading the blade’s musical language. A little tweak in lure or trailer selection, color or jighead weight can bring about radical results. Read on and learn more . . .
Top 9 (+1) ChatterBait Tips
Top 9+ ChatterBait® Commandments 1
(1) Color Coordinate – A common head-scratching bladed jig puzzle, color-coding your chosen ChatterBait with the right soft plastic trailer is usually easier than we make it. Sure, you can run wildly contrasting combos like a pearl-pattern ChatterBait MiniMax™ with a chartreuse/red tail MinnowZ™, or a ‘glitter-bomb’ ChatterBait Elite EVO with a fire-craw ChatterSpike™ for a different look.
Or, to follow the lead of pro anglers who face this riddle every day, you might opt instead to color-match your chosen ElaZtech® trailer to the bladed jig itself. For imitating crayfish, give ‘em a double dose of green pumpkin. In stained or tea-colored water, try black and blue all over. In high, dirty water, especially in spring, it’s all fire-craw orange, all the time. Or, for mimicking openwater baitfish, a one-two punch of shad-white to shad-white’s just right. You get the idea. The goal should mostly be to create one cohesive, color-coordinated critter—a continuous lure that impersonates nature rather than a cosplay convention.
(2) Pattern-Matching Trailers – While color coordinating your bladed jig and trailer can be critical, many anglers overlook the role the soft plastic bait plays in altering ChatterBait action and depth. For bottom hugging crawfish patterns, go slow or ‘stop-and-go’ with a double legged creature like the Gremlin™ or GOAT™. To imitate a bluegill in shallow cover, try a subtle, super realistic RaZor ShadZ™.
For probing slightly deeper—and for medium retrieve speeds—rig a slim-profile paddletail. The 4” DieZel MinnowZ™ or Scented PaddlerZ™ pair nicely with a ChatterBait Elite EVO or a JackHammer™.
To kick up the speed or max out a ChatterBait’s random juking movements, dial back tail action to a nervous little wag. A slender ChatterSpike™ or a 4- or 5-inch Scented Jerk ShadZ™ take a backseat to blade action, empowering the lure to perform those evasive, unpredictable moves that incite angry strikes.
PRO TIP: Try ‘vertical rigging’ a Z-Man GOAT, creating a cool scissor kicking double-tail swimbait trailer.
(3) Multispecies Mods – The ChatterBait’s prowess with big bass is undeniable. And yet, just off the radar, anglers seeking walleye, pike and redfish continue tapping alternative bites, thanks to the power of the blade.
Reserve your abused, naked (skirtless) ChatterBait JackHammers for walleye or pike duty. Add a paddletail swimbait and go to work around cabbage and other toothy critter cover. Or, kick up the visual attraction factor with an Eye Strike® ChatterBait. This eye-catching, naked bladed jig is the perfect vehicle for spicing your favorite redfish or walleye swimbait with flash, wobble and those good vibrations.
PRO TIP: Try probing deeper and slightly slower for walleye or bass with a ChatterBait WillowVibe / Slim SwimZ™ combo. This little ChatterBait offshoot has become a secret weapon among top river smallmouth and walleye guides.
(4) Go Deep – Quietly, select bass anglers are also mining deepwater bass with unconventional ChatterBait techniques. Instead of fishing shallow and horizontal with the crowd, consider grinding deep river channels, bluff banks and boulders. Think big bass. Untapped spots and smallmouths. Grind bottom just fast enough to keep the blade pulsing. Sweep the rod forward. Stop and reel slack as the lure “chatters” on the drop.
The money move for going deep remains a ¾- or 1-1/4-ounce JackHammer, dressed with a craw or creature bait trailer. Heavier bladed jigs hug bottom, traversing deep, rocky terrain, and alerting bass with audible collisions and amped up blade music.
(5) Tackling Up – While no single ChatterBait rod matches every application, pro anglers often favor a 7’1” to 7’4” casting rod for traditional horizontal retrieves. For ripping cover and controlling big fish, Z-Man pros prefer rods with stout spines. The tip section should be moderately fast, just soft enough to read yet absorb blade vibes with ease. Some anglers prefer a glass crankbait rod.
To match a variety of retrieves, consider a casting reel with a 7:1 or even an 8:1 gear ratio. Among pros, consensus is to opt for 30- to 50-pound test fluorocarbon for abrasion resistance, sensitivity and slight stretch.
(6) Cut the Grass – Turn angst with inevitable grass snags into bonus bites. When the lure comes up tight to a plant stalk, give the rod a fast, forceful rip. Not only will this power play immediately clear the lure of leafy debris, the sudden speed burst often coerces nearby bass to take a swing. Pay particular attention to what happens to the lure as it settles, immediately after attaining escape velocity.
Top 9+ ChatterBait® Commandments 2
(7) Off the Rails – As noted, ChatterBait trailer selection can impact lure depth and action, particularly the ease with which it enters ‘hunt mode.’ Empowered to randomly “go off the rails,” the ChatterBait Elite EVO becomes an evasive, juking machine when you suddenly speed up, slow down or give the rod a fast pop.
PRO TIP: Tournament anglers often use the gears of their high-speed casting reels—rather than rod action— to make the lure cut and dart randomly.
(8) Speed Demon – To big bass, there’s something irresistible about a fast-fleeing baitfish. It’s why burning a heavier, streamlined ChatterBait-trailer combo over skinny water can produce electrifying big fish bites. Be sure to rig it with a low-action, low-drag trailer for minimum water resistance and maximum speed. Scream a ½- to ¾-ounce bladed jig alongside a grassline. Shoot the lure past and parallel to boat docks. Don’t be surprised when a supertanker suddenly warps in and grabs the lure right beside your boat.
PRO TIP: If you enjoy arm-jarring eats, try burning a heavy, compact ½-ounce ChatterBait MiniMax with a 3.5” Jerk ShadZ or Finesse ShadZ™ across shallow rock or weed flats—especially sweet for jumbo smallmouths.
(9) Blade & Bite Music – If you’re paying attention, it’s impossible not to detect the musical, melodic vibration of a ChatterBait bladed jig. But “listening” closely to these sounds through your line down to your hands reveals what’s happening down below. When you hit the sweet spot, speed-wise, the blade sings, producing a pleasing rod-strumming cadence. It tells you when a piece of grass clings and comes aboard. And most importantly, when the blade suddenly stops thumping in its usual rapid drumbeat pulse, it nearly always means a bass has crashed the party. Reel down fast and sweep the hook home.
Top 9+ ChatterBait® Commandments 3
BONUS TIP: Auto (Instant) Activation – Anglers who choose a non ChatterBait bladed jig often realize the lure requires them to “activate” the blade—to get it pulsing— usually by popping the rodtip or briefly reeling extra fast. As pro anglers know, bass often sit tight to the bank, or within inches of cover. They’re waiting to ambush an animal. And if your bladed jig isn’t auto-activating and vibrating right out of the gate, if could be a long day.
Conversely, if you’re casting the real deal—a ChatterBait Elite EVO, JackHammer or StealthBlade™—the lure’s blade self-engages. No need for extra tricks or standing on one leg to get the blade to engage. Simply tie on an original ChatterBait bladed jig and get bit on those critical first few cranks of the reel handle. Easy like Sunday morning.
