Walking In A Southern Winter Wonder Land

As a southerner, walking in my winter wonderland was quite different from the song. No sleigh bells rang, but there were cows lowing, squirrels barking and crows crawing. And almost never did snow glisten, fog and wet glittering leaves were much more common.

Treks in the woods were more stalking than walking since my trusty .22 semiautomatic, a gift for my 8^th birthday, was always with me. Squirrels were my usual target but just about any wild critter was fair game, if in season.

Those trips were always learning experiences to a curious boy. I learned to identify green briar, which we called smilac, as one of the few green vines in the gray and brown woods. There was scattered honeysuckle, too, and later I found out how much deer depend on them for food in harsh winters.

Often, I could smell a cedar tree before seeing it, especially after as rain. And I did seek out thick cedars as protection from a sudden shower. I still got wet, but not as soaked as I would have without the tree over me.

I had favorite places to sit and watch for squirrels, and I often time traveled from them. Some of those travels were fantasy, some based on history. Although no cave men ever lived in my part of the world, I could imagine crouching on my rock grasping a club waiting on a sabretooth tiger.

A little more realistic were the times I would have my bow and arrow, dressed in a loin cloth and hoping for a deer for the tribe’s dinner. At times I could be dressed in gray, clutching my rifle hoping to spot a hated Yankee in his blue.

My favorite were the times I imagined my coonskin cap topping my head, with my flintlock rifle that never missed any target. I did carry a small hatchet and pretended it was like the one the frontiersmen carried.

The woods had moods, too. When the sun was bright and the sky clear and cold, everything seemed to sparkle. Even the drab browns and grays of winter seemed happier on those days. The branch gurgled louder, and everything seemed more lively.

On rainy days, the world was subdued. Colors were almost nonexistent and sounds muffled. Footsteps didn’t crunch in the leaves and even the branch seemed to sigh over limbs and rocks rather than have a happy gurgle.

Foggy days were different still. Like on rainy days, everything was subdued, but familiar objects became strange. The big white oak still looms large but seems threatening as it disappears into the gloom. That tall stump you leaned on yesterday now looks like a scary figure with the limb behind it an imagined raised arm and knife.

In fog, everything is muffled. I could actually move through the woods as quietly as I imagined I could as Davy Crockett. Leaves that still fell ghosted down without a crunch. And the branch gurgles were deadened by the thick fog.

Most winter days required a fire as some point, to either warm hands or cook a kill. Dry days were no problem, just get some leaves and twigs to start slightly bigger sticks.

But on foggy or rainy days, it was a challenge. I would first find a fairly flat rock to keep my effort off the soggy dirt. Then I would gather bark from a cedar or pine tree, peel some of it off to get to the dry under layer and carefully protect it from the wet. Nothing on the ground was suitable since twigs and leaves were soaked. So breaking small branches off a dead tree was the option. If I was careful enough I could get a fire started even on the worse days.

I always wanted to start my fires the same way as the imagined people of my mind, but flint and steel never worked for me, and a bow and stick never produced even a whiff of smoke.

To be prepared I always had some strike anywhere matches, heads carefully dipped in melted wax to seal them, with me. They were usually in a small pill bottle in my pocket and in the bottle were some cotton balls soaked in the same melted wax. The waxed cotton would burn hot for a few minutes and start a fire on even the wettest day.

Some of my best meals were eaten over such a fire. I liked roasted robin, they were easy to shoot and clean. And they tasted good, even if as tough as an old shoe after roasting on a spit to too well-done chewiness. Squirrels were also a regular feast roasted on the fire, but for some reason never tasted as good as the ones mama fried with gravy or made into squirrel and dumplings.

Trying to find other things to cook was interesting. I read about cooking and eating acorns but every way I tried they were so bitter they were inedible. Later I found the acorns needed to be ground up and soaked to remove the tannin from them.

Mushrooms popped up like magic throughout the woods after a rain, and I wanted to try them but was always afraid of them. It was drilled into me that toadstools were poison, and I never learned to be sure enough of the ones that were edible to try them.

Fish were in the branch and I caught them regularly, but they were never big enough to cook on a fire. A dozen of them cleaned and boiled barely made good stock for a fish stew. I never tried to cook fish in the woods.

Try walking in a winter wonder land around here this year, and take a kid with you if possible, to enjoy the imagination of the young.

Wintertime Crappie

Staying on Top of Wintertime Crappie

By DAVID RAINER
from The Fishing Wire
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

Of all the outdoor experiences my mother, now 86, enjoyed the most, it was watching a cork disappear as a slab crappie grabbed the minnow at the end of the line.

As is normal procedure, I check in on her every few days, and she wanted to know what I’d been doing.

“Catching crappie,” I said.

“I didn’t think you could catch crappie this time of year,” she responded.

“Well,” I said, “You haven’t been crappie fishing with Tony Adams.

”Adams is the fish-catching wizard who can catch crappie any time of year on his home impoundment – Lake Eufaula.

Although Eufaula is known as the “Bass Capitol of the World,” Adams spends most of his time on the water catching crappie.

When most folks in the outdoors community are in the woods chasing whitetails or cottontails, Adams is locating the likely spots where crappie congregate this time of year. He uses his Humminbird Helix 12 bottom machine (manufactured in Eufaula) to locate the fish on the spots he has found over the years. He uses the side-scanning feature to locate the spot and then switches to down-scanning to pinpoint where the fish are located on the structure.

“I find structure in 15 to 20 feet of water,” said Adams, who manages the Eufaula Marvin’s building supply store when he’s not catching crappie.

“When I see the fish on the Humminbird, I’ll drop down a minnow anywhere from 8 to 10 to 12 feet, depending on where the fish are holding.

”Adams uses 10-foot B&M poles and spinning reels with 6-pound-test, high-viz line. When the fish are deeper in the winter, he uses a No. 2 gold hook and a split-shot pinched 12 to 18 inches above the hook. If it gets a little windy, he’ll use a second split-shot to keep the bow out of his line.

The reason he uses the high-viz line is because it’s a lot easier to watch during the sunny, clear days.

“Obviously, you watch your rod tip, but I also watch that line,” Adams said. “Sometimes crappie will bite and come up with it. You can tell by the slack in the line that you’ve got a fish.

”When Adams hits the lake, he always has a bait bucket or two with plenty of minnows.

“In the summer, I’ll tip a jig with a minnow and bounce it off the bottom,” he said. “In the winter, I just use a minnow.”

Adams prefers to hook his minnow through the bottom lip and through the hard cartilage on the front of the head to allow more action from the bait.

“In the wintertime I try to keep the bait right at about the depth the fish are holding,” he said. “Then we just wait to see that rod tip bounce or go down and then pull in a slab.

”Of course, the weather plays a significant role in his fishing success during the winter, especially the wind. The cold doesn’t bother him. He just adds more clothes. It’s the wind that dictates his strategy.

“During the winter, the less wind there is, the better the fishing I can do,” he said. “You have to keep the bait in front of the crappie most of the time. The fish are in big schools on the structure. The more time you can have that minnow in front of the crappie, the better your chances of catching them.”

Adams said the wintertime pattern kicks off on Lake Eufaula around the first of December, and crappie will remain on structure until the weather starts to warm in February.

“In the middle of February, they’ll start moving into the mouths of the creeks to do some pre-spawning,” he said. “We’ll start catching a lot more fish in the creeks. Then when they move up to spawn, we’ll catch a lot of fish in the creeks. That’s when I start throwing jigs around the grass, the rocks and bridge pilings. I’ll be shooting (casting underneath) docks because the fish are getting shallow. On Lake Eufaula, it seems the bigger fish come up first.

“In the spring, sometimes they’re in 12 inches of water all the way down to 5 feet of water. Some of them spawn in 5 feet of water. Sometimes they’ll spawn deeper than at other times.”

Adams will do two things while the crappie are in their transition period from spawn to summer. He catches plenty of catfish, but he also makes sure plenty of structure will be available to fish for the summertime and wintertime patterns.“While the fish are spawning, I’ll put structure out in deeper water,” said Adams, who uses mainly bamboo but will also sink crepe myrtles and small cedars. “I’ll take a 5-gallon bucket, fill it about halfway with water. I’ll pour in some concrete mix. I’ll have the bamboo already trimmed at the bottom and start sticking it into the concrete. I’ll make sure the bamboo is sticking in every direction. Then I’ll look for spots where the new structure will cover about half the water column. If I’m going to put it out in 20 feet of water, I’ll have the bamboo about 10 feet tall.

“Right about Memorial Day is when the crappie are back on that heavy structure in the middle of the lake,” he said.

On our trip last week, we hit the lake with a cold front approaching. It was the kind of day a bass fisherman dreams of – cloud cover with mild temperatures and the barometer falling. Those conditions usually put the bass species into a feeding frenzy.

We found out that doesn’t translate to crappie fishing. With a light fog and heavy cloud cover, the fish weren’t really in a biting mood. We’d catch two or three fish in one spot and then have to move to find a few more.

Then – cue the Hallelujah Choir – the sun broke through the clouds, and the bite began in earnest. Within six or seven minutes, we had put 10 nice keepers in the boat. That trend continued until the approaching front forced us back to the boat ramp.

“My favorite time to fish is when the sun is shining,” Adams said. “I think the fish get tighter to the structure. I also think maybe the sun shining may give that minnow a different kind of look in that deep water. That sunshine seems to kick off the bite. We definitely did a lot better when the sun was shining.

”Back to the wind, which will determine whether it’s worth launching the boat on certain days.

“On a real windy day, it’s hard to crappie fish,” he said. “Based on where you are in the lake, if you have 6- to 7-mile-per-hour winds, it could be white-capping. That will mean 15-inch to 2-foot waves. That minnow is moving up and down with the waves, which is not natural. With the crappie not as aggressive in the wintertime, they’re not going to bite something moving like that.

“I’m looking for 5 miles an hour or less. Calm is even better. Cold is not a problem. You can drop that minnow right in front of his face. It may take him a few minutes to hit it, but he will eventually hit it.

”Although we didn’t use any types of bobbers to catch the fish, I’m sure my mom won’t mind when I fry her up a batch of fillets from the 38 crappie we put in the ice chest.

How and Where to Catch June Lake Russell Bass, with GPS Coordinates To Ten Spots

June 2015 Russell Bass

with Carter McNeil

June is finally here and its time for vacations and fishing. If you want to catch a lot of spotted bass on a beautiful lake with a natural shoreline and clear water, head to Lake Russell. And keep some of the small spotted bass for a fish fry!

Russell is a Corps of Engineers lake on the Savannah River between Hartwell and Clarks Hill. Shoreline development is restricted, so it is one of our prettiest lakes. And it doesn’t get as crowded with pleasure boaters as most of our lakes.

The lake has a lot of good rocky points and humps that spots love. And the channels are marked by poles where they drop off so it is easy to find them and fish. Brushpiles have been put out on many of them and there is standing timber all over the lake, giving bass ideal habitat.

Spots were illegally introduced into Russell not long after it was filled and they have overcrowded the lake, as happens all too often on lakes where they are not native. They are fun to catch and eat but they tend to harm the largemouth population and fill the lake with “rats,” spots around 12 inches long. Since there is no size limit on them you can keep ten a day to eat and actually help the lake.

Carter McNeil lives near in Russell in Abbyvile South Carolina and fishes with the Abbyville Panthers High School team. He also fishes many pot and open tournaments on Russell and other area lakes. His Grandfather Danny Whaley and uncle Trad Whaley brought him up fishing and taught him a lot about bass and he fished his first tournament when only ten years old.

Their training has paid off. Carter is going to Bethel College this year on a fishing scholarship and will be on their fishing team. And he had an incredible honor this year when he BASS named him to their High School All American Bass Team, one of only 12 fishermen nationwide to get that recognition.

In their press release on the All American Team, BASS says about Carter: “He and his partner won the B.A.S.S. Nation High School Southern Divisional on the Pee Dee River in April and took third place in the 2015 Costa Bassmaster High School Classic Exhibition. McNeil is the founder and president of his fishing team and a frequent volunteer for Corps of Engineers projects aimed at planting aquatic vegetation on South Carolina’s Lake Russell.”

Carter likes fishing Russell and does well in tournaments there. In June he says the bass will be set up on their summer holes, points and humps out from spawning creeks, and can be caught on a variety of baits.

“Shallow water that drops off fast into deep water is key this time of year,” Carter said. Any hump or point that falls into the channel will hold fish, and the key depth to catch them is eight to 15 feet deep. So he wants his boat to be in at least 20 feet of water when casting to water eight feet deep.

A variety of baits to cover those key depths is fairly simple. A Norman’s Deep Little N, a drop shot worm, a shaky head and a Pulse Jig all work well and are really all you need for a good day of fishing. You will catch a lot of bass on those baits but for bigger fish he will have a big worm like a Zoom Old Monster Texas rigged to flip standing timber.

The following ten spots are good right now and give you an example of the kinds of places you want to fish in June.

1. N 34 08.284 – W 82 41.570 – Go up the Savannah River to Channel Markers 43 and 45 and stop about one third of the way across the river out from them. There is a hump that comes up right by the channel and tops out about ten feet deep. There is some brush piles on the hump and standing timber around it. You will be at the tip of a triangle with the two channel markers on the bank as the base.

When you find the hump stop off the river side of it with your boat in 30 feet of water and cast to the top in about ten feet. Carter starts with a Deep Little N in a baitfish color like sexy shad or glimmer blue, with some chartreuse in it. Cast past the top of the hump so the bait is hitting bottom on top in ten feed and fish it back to the boat. Carter got a keeper spot on the crankbait here the day we fished.

Carter reels his crankbait fairly fast and sweeps his rod every few feet to make the bait dart forward. He says fish will often follow the bait and when it speeds up will eat it. Fan cast all over the hump from the river side with a crankbait, then fish a jig head worm, drop shot and Pulse Jig around it, too.

2. N 34 08.039 – W 82 41.513 – Go in toward the small creek with the big island in the mouth of it just downstream of channel marker 43. Behind and downstream of that channel marker a ditch comes off the bank in the mouth of the spawning creek that is behind the island and bass move to it in June. Stop in about 20 feet of water and cast to the top of the flat along the ditch.

This is the kind of “feeding table,” a flat area that drops into deep water that Carter concentrates on in June. Fish your crankbait over the top of the flat and ditch edge then try your other baits. Remember that bass seem to feed best in eight to 15 feet of water so work that depth hard.

Carter keeps a Robo morning dawn worm on a drop shot rig ready to drop down to fish he sees on his depthfinder. He likes a fairly heavy lead to get to the bottom fast and stay there as he gently twitches his rod tip to make the worm jiggle in place. His leader is about a foot long.

3. N 34 07.677 – W 82 40.182 – Across the river and a little downstream a fairly big creek enters the lake between channel markers 42 and 44. In the mouth of the creek, not far off the upstream point of it, you will see four shoal markers. Out from the downstream point of the creek there is a hump that is good. It is way off the red clay small bluff bank on the point.

This hump tops out about 15 feet deep and an old road bed crosses the deep side of it. Sit out on the river side in 30 feet of water and cast across it. Carter will switch to a DD 22N on deeper places like this so he can bump the bottom.

The bottom here is hard, a key since Carter says bass like hard bottoms. Fish along this long hump downstream. It will drop off some on a more narrow area then come back up on the end of that section of it. Fish that area where it comes back up shallower before leaving.

4. N 34 07.163 – W 82 40.277 – Back across the river and downstream channel marker 35 sits on the upstream side of a point where the channel hits it. On the back side the point drops off fast and there are some brush piles here and on almost all the other places, too.

Stop in at least 20 feet of water on the back side of the marker and cast your crankbait and jig head up on it. Rocks here hold mostly spots and we got a couple of small ones when we fished it. Work from the end of the point toward the bank a short distance, keeping most of your cast in the area around the pole.

Current moving across this point in both directions, from generating power and pumpback at the dam, make this and other places much better. Baitfish move across the shallow water with the current and the bass wait on them to feed as they pass.

5. N 34 06.090 – W 82 39.937 – Downstream on the same side Indian Creek enters the lake between channel markers 29 and 31. There is a small island on the downstream side and underwater timber signs warn that the creek is full of standing trees. You can see many of them sticking a little out of the water.

In tournaments or other times when bigger bass are the goal Carter will go to timber like this and flip it with a big worm. He rigs a big worm or lizard Texas style behind a one quarter ounce sinker for a slow fall and flips it to the trees, letting it fall on the shady side of the trunk. The bigger the wood the better. Fish will hold on these trees at different depths at different times of the day and the higher the sun the deeper they go.

Carter will work through the trees, targeting the bigger ones, going into the creek. He lets his worm fall watching his line for a tick or if the worm stops falling before hit should. That is the time to set the hook! He seldom lets his worm go all the way to the bottom, expecting the fish to be suspended in the tree.

6. N 34 05.817 – W 82 39.543 – Further downstream on the same side of the river there is a big double cove between channel markers 27 and 29. The middle point of this cove is a good feeding flat table and it drops off into deeper water on the downstream side. Carter says many fishermen ride past places like this a little off the main points so they don’t get fished as hard as the spots marked by poles.

Stay on the downstream side of the middle point out in 20 plus feet of water and cast up on the point to eight to ten feet of water with all your baits. When fishing a Pulse Jig Carter puts a white or translucent Fluke on a half-ounce head and counts it down to the depth fish are holding. He then reels it back with a steady retrieve, keeping it at that depth.

The Pulse Jig is a wobble head jig and is a more subtle bait than the crankbait, but you can fish it faster than a jig head or drop shot. Keep it near the bottom and don’t set the hook when you feel a hit. Just keep reeling until your rod loads up then sweep it to bury the hook.

7. N 34 04.238 – W 82 39.332 – In the mouth of Beaverdam Creek, just upstream of Elbert Park, usually called the Highway 72 ramp, the first big cove on the left going upstream has three islands in the mouth of it. The downstream one has a shoal marker on a point running off it toward the channel.

This big long point has some rocks on it and fish feed on it. Stay out in about 20 feet of water and cast up on the top of the point to about eight feet and work your baits back. Stay on the river side of the point.

“Wind is your aggravating friend,” Carter said. Some wind blowing across these spots helps like the current does, making baitfish move across them. It makes boat control and positioning more difficult but can help the fishing as long as it is not too strong to allow you to fish. We caught a couple of small spots here, too, so fish were on it in mid-May.

8. N 34 04.909 – W 82 40.477 – Going into Beaverdam Creek channel marker 8 sits on a hump off the bank and there is a shoal marker between it and the point. Carter says this is one of the biggest community holes on the lake and there is a race to it in tournaments since it holds so many fish.

The water drops off on the downstream side of the channel marker and forms a ledge going toward the bank. Stay on the downstream side in deep water and cast up on the hump around the channel marker then work all the way to the point. There is a big flat that is an excellent feeding area and fish hold all over the edge of the drop so fish it carefully.

9. N 34 04.880 – W 82 41.725 – Further up Beaverdam Creek channel marker 9 sits on the creek side of a small island. It marks a point coming off the island and dropping into the channel. Carter says it is a real good rocky point and has some brush on it, too.

Stop on the downstream side near the island and fish that side of the point out to and past the channel marker. This is the deeper side and holds the most fish so Carter works it rather than the flatter upstream side.

Fish all your baits. With the shaky head Carter slides it along the bottom until he hits brush or rocks, then stops it and shakes it a little before moving it more. He uses a quarter ounce homemade head and likes a Zoom red bug Trick worm on it.

10. N 34 05.260 – W 82 42.390 – Going upstream Beaverdam Creek makes a fairly sharp bend around an island on the left side. On the right just off a point channel marker 18 shows where a good flat drops off into the channel. The channel swings in right by it making it even better.

Stay out in deep water and cast along the shallow flat that runs parallel to the channel around the marker. Here and other places keep a watch on your depthfinder for fish holding out in the deeper water. Carter got a spot here by dropping his drop shot worm down to fish he saw holding well off the flat.

Check out these places, fish them the way Carter suggests and try his bait. Once you get the pattern down you can find many similar places all over the lake and catch fish from them.

Black Sea Bass

Grace of the Food Chain

By Zach Harvey
from The Fishing Wire

“What a @#$%! racket,” I mumble to no one in particular, as I take in the massive southward sky, a dome of high cloud centered directly overhead, everything bending down and in toward the horizon and into the drink. To the north, the Rhode Island mainland floats on a shimmering band of bent light. I, the “nature boy,” confirm that everything’s set, as my boss rounds up for a quick pass over a little cluster of boulders, cobble and mussel beds off the south side of Block Island.

I feel the 35-foot Down Easter slide out of gear and, on force of habit, pluck my rod out of the holder, tuck it under my left arm and swing the rig up for a final inspection. We glide for a second while Cappy checks his screens. Then we rumble into reverse for a moment to halt forward progress and wait for the prop wash to settle out.

We’ve just baited and dumped the last of eight large old-school fish pots in a half-mile square. Now we wait. And by wait, I mean rod-and-reel a bunch of huge sea bass.

In the two decades I’ve spent working on the water, the days I’ve felt downright smug about my lot in life have been variations on this morning’s undertaking: a windless, flat-ass calm, early-fall hard-bottom recon trip, working on big black sea bass, 3 pounds to more than 6. The world record black sea bass scaled a terrifying 9 pounds and change.

I don’t believe in the hierarchy of “worthy” sportfishing quarry, where a handful of species — tarpon, bonefish, marlin, tuna, striped bass and sails, among others — are ascribed incredible strength, cunning, wits, beauty and prowess, while other species get scoffed at. It’s an underdog thing. It’s also a different ethic about our waters, the fish, the food chain, where the noblest quarry is what everyone eats with gusto, because in my world, the familial (blood or elective) feasting completes a rite that began predawn when we hung the last spring line on its designated piling.

When you lay same-day sea bass on a grocery-store seafood consumer, the gratitude radiates tenfold. Fish this good can’t be bought for all the Franklins in a Manhattanite billfold, but it’s traded for tomatoes or corn, or gifted to neighbors who understand the weight of the gesture.

Few things fill a soul with sacred human purpose like a cooler full of well-iced, bled, rinsed and packed black sea bass — or its yield in well-cut fillets, translucent, almost iridescent, on a plate beside the stove.Our first drift, I hang up inside a minute — one hazard of fishing adrift around the broken ground that concentrates sea biscuits. Cappy rips his rig in, liberates a pair of wallet-sized specimens, each sporting a 4/0 octopus hook that looks, proportionally, the way a gaff head might in the maw of a 3-pounder.

Not what we’re after.I fetch a replacement rig from a bunch dangling off the plumbed bait barrel up against the wheelhouse. I slip on a sinker and bait up with squid and an oozing black glob of sea clam belly (the former for staying power, the latter for scent power) on each hook.

“This feels a little better,” my deckmate announces, just as my sinker contacts the ground floor with a clank.

I note a respectable bend in his heavyish setup. I’m about to speak when I feel a wild thump and discover the fish has more or less hung itself with no help from me. I’m just squaring up to the rail, starting to pry the fish out of the seabed when a strange weightless plucking sensation shoots through the line to my brain. I snap the rod skyward. The tip barely moves.

For a second I worry I’m hung up again, but as I lean back on the rod, I note my new rock is bucking an awful lot.

“Got two,” I announce.

Two good sea bass on one rig have a distinct feel, a weird, disjointed tugging and a consistent, substantial weight. Fish under 5 pounds fight comically hard in a way that makes it almost impossible not to smile, especially when your rig is full-up and you can lean back on the rod, balance yourself against the strain.

I will concede that bottom fishing isn’t a fishery of endless technical complexity, by which I mean: “simple,” not to be mistaken for “easy.

”The fact that we’re in the thick of a sea bass boom doesn’t change one hard truth of the hunt for thick sea bass: the guys who have the real estate, the hangs, the wrecks, the rock piles, the little nothing bump off in the geographic center of mudflat nowhere, the mussel bed in 41 feet surrounded by an acre of 41 feet, the lat-lons corresponding to a bed, two Cadillacs long, one Prius wide, of small, still chewable mussels. Or the little nugget you steamed over on the way to or from tuna grounds, mined 7 years of logbook to find three almost identically worded entries — lat-lons, followed by “load of stuff hard on bottom.”

They’re the ones with the good stuff.Subsequent recon unearthed a flurry of honest-to-Christ 4-pound sea bass and a lone cod pushing 20 pounds. You can now recite the coordinates along with your wedding anniversary, wife’s birthday, your bike lock combination and your first telephone number.

Here’s the deal: You can prattle on for weeks about hooks, knots or teaser colors, but if you don’t have some sea bass ground, debating tackle minutia is like rearranging the Titanic’s deck chairs.

Anyone can catch black sea bass if it’s a purely quantitative exercise. But without the possibility of cracking 5 pounds in the process, I’d rather make a couple swipes at the lunch cooler, stuff my face with cold cuts, wipe my hands on opposing sleeves and stare into the briny middle distance, trying to remember, say, the joke that goes with the punchline, “the potato goes in front.

”Now, after a minute taking back line I’d deployed to hold bottom, the fight is vertical. I’m genuinely surprised how hard the mystery fish are dogging me. I’m half expecting to see a big cod emerge from the murky depths.

“Good one, huh,” says my boss as he dumps his reel in freespool. “Let me know if you need a net on that.

”The suspense is killing me. It could be almost anything down there. A few more cranks, and I see the barrel swivel on my rig flash into view, but still no sign of whatever’s on there. Almost no other species in our waters can out-camouflage a sea bass from above.

A 3-pound sea biscuit has the top hook solidly in its jaw hinge — nowhere near enough to explain this fight.

“I’m up,” I announce, “Got that net?”

The bottom fish is a good one. My partner deftly bags that one first, gathers up the smaller one on the way up. The larger looks obscene. I’d guess 7 pounds if I didn’t know better. So 5, probably.I glance toward my railmate just as his rod goes down hard. A split-second later mine does, too. No head-shakes. No bounce. Obscenities all around. It takes a moment to figure out what’s happening.

The line’s clearly hung up, but there’s some limited play: I can gain about four cranks before it stops dead. We scan in all directions for evidence of lobster gear, the buoys on up-and-down lines, but see none. Probably an unmarked gillnet or a string with too-short buoy lines sucking under in the tide — standard fare for Block Island’s south side. We break off, then gather around the helm to investigate.

Sure enough, it’s a gillnet. We find another string a couple of tics east of where we’d started that first drift, then some lobster gear just west of the mystery net. Trying to anchor hemmed in like that seldom ends well.

Two hours later, a couple dozen solid sea bass and a handful of big porgies on ice, the skipper wants to go check the pots. When sea bass are thick, a mesh bait bag of sea clams seldom holds on beyond a couple of hours. Rod-and-reeling seldom, if ever, keeps pace with good fish pots.

At least we got a few, and more importantly, I got the biggest one in the box, which means Cappy’s buying the Guinness.

This mission was more than a decade ago, well before the abrupt spike in black sea bass populations across the Northeast. With the change came not only more and bigger BSB on the old ground, but swarms in all sorts of places no one could recall having seen them before. The places that had always collected a few suddenly had knots of them. No doubt, the transformative effect of aptly-named Hurricane Sandy had a hand in the distribution shakeup. A storm that changed the entire lay of Block Island’s south side had even more dramatic effects below the low-tide mark. Some known wrecks silted over and vanished completely, while whole constellations of hitherto unknown structures got cleared off and began to take on tenants within a season or two.

More important, climbing water temps — which have sparked a marked shift northward and eastward in the migratory patterns of other stocks, such as summer flounder — have also likely triggered our recent BSB invasion.

In the seasons since, the rod-and-reelers have embraced the advantages of the new arrangement.

Unfortunately, the population explosion has been tempered by one huge regulatory caveat: Lack of the statutorily mandated science to guide decisions, and a call for management accountability, have subtracted from already miniscule catch targets. As stocks grow exponentially and spread out, more anglers catch more sea bass, and landings spike, triggering quota-overage paybacks in each successive year. We call it the “death spiral”: booming resource destroys fishery.

And so a fish in exponential population growth, a fish hard-wired to run other same-tier predators off ground, a fish aggressive enough, fishermen argue, to threaten other rebuilding stocks where they overlap, will flourish indefinitely. Sadly, this fish, which could easily shoulder some pressure from overburdened fisheries such as striped bass, fluke, tautog or cod, remains trapped in bureaucratic limbo.

Our new sea bass bonanza, then, will be fished as black sea bass always have: as a welcome bycatch bonus for guys targeting other species. Then, for a short period according to state regulations, when the possession limit jumps just enough to support an hour or two of dedicated sea bass highgrading, we’ll attempt to put up fillets for winter.

I’m less worried about the big kill than with maintaining the spirit of celebration around seasonal bounty that imposes some predictable order on my charmed life of perpetual adolescence beside the sea.The black sea bass could be the most strikingly beautiful of any creature that lives coastal — long, graceful fins, striking white and electric-blue highlights, big fleshy humps on the foreheads of the joes.

According to my increasingly eccentric take on the fishing life, where the avoidance of macho B.S. lives in my bones, black sea bass swim on both sides of the jagged line between the fire in my belly and the water in my soul: proof that I still live by the grace of the food chain, and evidence, by their very design, of larger gears turning, a greater clockwork presiding over the fleeting eons.

This article originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of Anglers Journal magazine.

How and Where to Catch October Bass at Lake Allatoona, with GPS Coordinates

October Allatoona Bass

with Brian Cox

October is a great month to go bass fishing anywhere in our state. But mention Lake Allatoona and most fishermen will give you a strange look and ask why go to the “Dead Sea.” That misconception about Allatoona keeps many from enjoying the great fishing there.

Allatoona gets crowded since it is just outside Atlanta. On the weekends in the summer pleasure boaters make it hard to fish during the day. But right now the lake is not nearly as crowded and the spots are biting. Largemouth can be caught this month, too.

Brian Cox grew up in Woodstock and his father and grandfather taught him to fish. He got the bass fishing bug at 12 years old and started fishing Allatoona when he was 15. He now lives near the lake, guides on Allatoona and fishes several tournament trails and pot tournaments on the lake.

Three years ago Brian was won the point standings for Angler of the Year in the ABA trail, winning about ten tournaments that year. He also fishes the Bulldog BFL and AFT tournaments and does well in them. For the past year he has taken some time off from tournament fishing to spend more time with his kids but is getting back into it now

Kids are important to Brian. He loves taking them out on trips and seeing their delight in catching fish. He hopes to start a fishing camp for kids, where they will go for a day camp or for a multi-day camp and learn about fishing.

“October is great on Allatoona,” Brian said. The bass are moving more shallow and feeding, and you can catch them on a lot of patterns and baits. Brian’s favorites include a buzzbait, Zara Spook, crankbait, Fluke, jig and pig and jig head worm. With those baits you can cover any condition any day in October.

Rocks, from pea gravel to chunk rocks are a key, and brush piles and blowdowns increase your odds that bass will be feeding on a spot. Wind makes a big difference and it helps all kinds of places, but clay banks can also be good when the wind is blowing in on them. Points and banks in the mid lake area are where he concentrates his time.

Brian took me to Allatoona in early September to show me the following ten spots and how he catches bass on them. The fish were just starting to hit on some of them but by now all will hold bass.

1. N 34 08.088 – W 84 40.365 – Bass follow the shad and the shad move into creeks and cuts during October, especially later in the month. A good place to check for shallow bass is in the back of the creek just downstream of the Bartow-Carver Camp ramp. This creek goes back and splits into several fingers. Brian likes the one to the right going into the creek.

There are many trees in the water cut by the Alltaoona Tree Cutting Project and by fishermen back in this creek. Brian starts near the mouth of the fork and works all the way around it. He fishes an Albino Shad Zoom Fluke over the trees and along the bank in here. You can keep your boat near the middle of the cut and fish all the wood in the water.

After working the wood with a Fluke, Brian will follow up with a shaky head worm. He likes a one quarter ounce head with a green pumpkin Finesse worm on it. A jig and pig will also catch fish in the trees. Dip the tails of the jig trailer and the Finesse worm in chartreuse JJ’s Magic to make the fish bite better. Spots seem to love a flash of chartreuse.

If you see shad on the surface or balls of them on your depthfinder fish the area slowly and carefully. Brian says this time of year find the shad and you will find the bass, so if baitfish are present the bass will be, too.

2. 34 08.415 – W 84 40.116 – Come out of the creek and stop on the downstream point of the second pocket below the ramp. This bank is shady in the morning and Brian says it is a great place to throw a buzzbait. He will start at the point and work all the way down the bank to the back of the pocket.

For some reason the fish here will put their nose right on the bank so Brian casts so his Strike King white one half ounce buzzbait hits on the bank. He pulls it off the bank without a splash and is ready for a bite as soon as it gets in the water.

If wind is blowing in on this bank it is even better. Some chop on the water really helps the bite anywhere you are fishing on Allatoona. Also keep a watch or surface activity here and be ready to throw a Spook or Sammy to them.

3. N 34 09.512 – W 84 39.881 – Another good bank for topwater and a jig and pig or jig head worm is in Illinois Creek. Go past the buoy at the bend and watch the right bank past it. There are big rocks on this bank and it drops off fast, and bass hold on it and feed on passing shad.

There are some key spots along this bank where big boulders are under the water. Keep your boat out in 30 feet of water and work the jig and pig or jig head worm from the edge all the way out to the boat. When you see or hit the big rocks with your bait out in 15 to 20 feet of water fish that spot carefully.

Fish a topwater bait along this bank, too. With all your baits cast at an angle ahead of the boat. The bank is so steep you will be fairly close to the shore even in 30 feet of water so cast to the bank ahead of the boat and work your bait back at an angle to hit the big boulders.

4. N 34 07.848 – W 84 39.712 – Run up to the Atlanta Yacht Club and go into the creek on the downstream side of it. Go all the way to the split in the back and fish the right side split of it. Start near the point and keep your boat out in the middle of the cove and cast to the bank. There are stumps, brush and rocks back in here that hold the bass.

A jig or jig head worm works well but this is a good crankbait area, too. Brian likes a chartreuse and brown crankbait that will hit the bottom when fishing this area. Fish all your baits all the way to the middle of the creek and make some casts ahead of the boat to cover the channel, too.

5. N 34 08.431 – W 84 38.211 – Running up the river, channel maker 19.5 will be on a point on your left. There are several pockets along this bank across from Gault’s Ferry ramp but Brian likes to fish the upstream point of the second one upstream of the channel marker.

It is ideal, with deep water just off it and clay and rocks on the bank and a blowdown you can see half way into the cove. There are also some trees and brush out from the bank underwater that hold bass.

Start with a buzzbait or Spook casts to the bank and worked out, then go back over the area with your crankbait. Fish over the tip of the blowdown you see and try to find the hidden brush. You can also probe the brush with a jig and pig or jig head worm.

Brian says there are three kinds of rock that hold fish right now. Pea gravel is good, especially when wind is blowing on it. Chunk rocks the size of softballs are good as are boulders. Banks like this one where there is a transition from one kind of rock to another is even better. Fish the edge of the rock change hard.

6. N 34 07.595 – W 84 38.053 – Across the river and upstream is Harbor Town Marina. In a cove just upstream of it is a youth camp with a dock on the downstream side. The point across from the dock is a good one, with clay, rock and a few boulders on it. There are also some blowdowns on the downstream bank..

Start on the point and fish topwater, crankbaits and jigs from the point about half way into the cove. You will be fishing the bank across from the dock. The transition areas are key places and you want to make sure shad are in the area. Also keep an eye out for surface activity.

Work the tips of the blowdowns, too. Try topwater and crankbaits over them then probe them with jigs and jig head worms. Try to hit the ends of the limbs and raise your bait up and let it fall back several times, and jiggle your rod tip to make the bait dance.

7. N 34 08.179 – W 84 38.146 – Just upstream from #5 the river makes a big bend and a huge flat runs out from the left bank going upstream. The flat has small islands on it and some danger markers. If you idle parallel to the flat near the channel, out from the shoal marker near the willow tree on an island just underwater, you will cross a point running off the flat downstream.

This point has pea gravel and other rock on it. The point runs out 30 to 40 yards and drops off into very deep water. It is ideal since it comes out of deep water and leads to a good feeding flat. And there is usually some wind here.

Keep your boat out in 25 to 30 feet of water and make long casts across the point with jigs and worms. Work the bait up one side, across the top and down the other side. If this doesn’t work, cast your jig so it falls straight down on top of the point. Brian says those two methods, working your bait to and through cover or letting it fall straight down into it, are both good.

8. N 34 08.412 – W 84 37.574 – Above the channel bend there is a huge flat off the left bank going upstream. A key area on this flat is a ditch that comes out of a small cove near a danger marker on top of a hump way across the river from channel marker 22 E. The ditch runs out to the river and offers the bass a perfect path.

When wind is blowing across this flat Brian will fan cast it with a crankbait, staying out inabout 15 feet of water. You can catch fish from the danger marker all the way back to #7 working it with a crankbait. Make long casts and try to hit bottom as much as you can with your bait.

Also keep a topwater ready. Brian says fish school up in this area a lot. If you have your Spook or Sammy ready and hit where they are breaking you will catch fish. Some may be hybrids but bass school up here all over this flat.

9. N 34 08.025 – W 84 37.323 – Across the river a big clay bluff point sits on the upstream side of Kellog Creek. There are laydowns and boulders on it as well as clay. Channel marker 22 E sits on the point and it is an excellent one to fish this time of year.

Brian keeps his boat in about 15 feet of water on the downstream side of the point and casts across it with a jig and pig. Most of the boulders are on the upstream side of the point so casting past them and working back through them moves the bait in a natural way. Also fish the blowdowns on the point.

10. N 34 07.948 – W 84 36.843 – Go into Kellog Creek and watch for a big block rock seawall on your left past the first couple of coves. It is just upstream of a house with a huge catfish replica on the roof of the garage. The seawall point holds a lot of big spots and Brian says he has caught several four pounders here.

Start with topwater here and fish all the way around the point to the next small cove. Work it carefully and give the big fish time to chase down your bait. You can also probe it with a jig and pig or jig head worm, or run a crankbait on it.

All these places are great right now throughout October. Try Brian’s favorite baits and your own, and you can find similar places to fish these patterns, too.

To see first-hand how Brian fishes Alltoona call him at and check his website at 770-855-7388 http://www.metroatlantafishing.com/ for more info.

Air Gun for Christmas

A Christmas Air Gun?

By Frank Sargeant, Editor
from The Fishing Wire

Remember “A Christmas Story” the classic movie tale of Ralphie Parker and his dreamed-of Christmas Red Ryder BB gun? If you don’t you’ll probably have a number of chances to see it again within the next week—the film has run on cable channels nearly every Christmas season since it was filmed in 1983.

Basically the film is about Ralphie, a sort of geeky kid circa 1940’s who obsesses on a special model of the venerable BB gun, while his mother is sure it will be his destruction. His beset and frequently blixtoflipblankety-blanking dad (there were no curse words uttered in the film, but lots of near misses from ol’ pop) has to be convinced the gun is OK—which of course he is by the end of the film.

Ralphie defeats a bully, gets the present of his dreams and all live happily ever after, sort of.

There are still a lot of Ralphie Parkers out there who might want an actual shootable gun for Christmas, even in this age of iPhones, Siri and Alexa. And the modern version of the Red Ryder is still around, and still on the Christmas wish list for a lot of kids, particularly those who have grown up in hunting and shooting families. But many older kids and a whole lot of adults might prefer some of the amazing advances in air gun technology that have come along in the last few years—and that are now sold at affordable prices for most of us.

First, a caution—even though Ralphie was a kid who needed glasses and frequent adult advice to stay out of trouble, air guns beyond the “Air-Soft” models do not fall into the category of toys for kids of any age. Even the basic Daisy Red Ryder is capable of causing serious injury to humans, pets, windows, televisions and the paint job on your BMW–anything that can be injured or broken. Like archery gear, which is increasingly popular among young people these post “Catching Fire” days, an air gun used carelessly can be dangerous.

With that provision, responsible older kids under adult supervision—and responsible adults—might well have an air-powered BB gun or pellet rifle on their Christmas list this year. The guns are far quieter than even a .22 short rimfire and their range is far more limited, making it possible to enjoy target practice safely and without bothering the neighbors in safely backstopped areas that are not miles out of town. In families where firearms are part of the legacy, they can make a good first gun for training.

It’s also a big plus that ammo costs a fraction of what standard ammunition costs—you can do many hours of shooting for what it would cost for a few minutes with center-fire or even rim-fire conventional firearms.

For those who get more serious about air gun shooting, there are now big bore air guns with amazing power that are actually being used to take deer and other big game. They’re expensive, noisy and of course dangerous when used carelessly, but it’s a mark of the strides airgun manufacturers have made in recent years to develop this sort of power. Daisy is by far the best-known manufacturer of air guns in the U.S.—the company has been making them since 1895.

The company and their Gamo subsidiary make a broad spectrum of air rifles, both bb guns that shoot round steel bb’s and pellet guns, which fire larger rifled slugs in .177 or .22 sizes. (Some larger-bore rifles in the .35 size are also available now for hunting, but are much above the entry-level pricing.) Pellet guns are more powerful and more accurate at longer ranges than BB guns. In fact, they’re used in the Olympics—there are 10-meter (about 32.8 feet) events in both pistol and rifle divisions. To be sure, the rifles used by these super-accurate shooters are very, very pricey—some made by Anschutz list at over $4,500.But it’s possible to get into air gun shooting very economically.

The classic Daisy Red Ryder is still just 25 bucks at Wal-Mart. And much improved entry-level pellet rifles are also surprisingly affordable. One of the more interesting offerings this year is the new Gamo Swarm Maxxim, a 10-shot repeater that comes with a 3 x 9 x 40 mm scope for about $180.

The Swarm is no kid’s toy—it can shoot a .177 pellet at up to 1300 feet per second according to the manufacturer. (A .22 version is also available.) A .22 short rimfire goes down range at around 1100 feet per second, so clearly the Swarm has to be treated as any firearm, never pointed at anything one would not want to shoot, never loaded except when shooting is imminent and always treated as if it were loaded, even when thought to be empty.

The repeating function is a big plus in the Swarm—most pellet guns require you to cock the gun, insert a pellet and fire, then cock again, insert another pellet and so on. It’s slow and bothersome when target shooting. The Swarm uses a rotating cylinder to hold 10 pellets, so it’s possible to shoot 10 times without reloading. A counter on the side of the cylinder shows how many shots are left. The scope also adds another dimension to the rifle—it’s got the same adjustments for windage and elevation as scopes costing a whole lot more, and optic quality is good for the price level. (If you’re not familiar with sighting in a scope, there are plenty of good videos on the internet to show you how—basically right and left adjustments are on the side dial, up and down on the top dial.)

To shoot, you simply pull down on the barrel to recharge the gun with air, close it up, release the safety, aim and fire. Once sighted in, accuracy is on a par with conventional rifles at short ranges, out to about 30 yards, and good shooters can hit a golf ball at 50 to 80 yards.

Not only is the gun good for target shooting, if you’ve got a pesky squirrel chewing holes in your eaves—which I did prior to getting the Gamo—it can be a very quick solution. (Before you write, note that squirrel season is open across Alabama Sept. 14 to March 8, with the limit 8 daily.)

To get more details on air guns, visit https://gamousa.com or https://www.daisy.com. For those who get into air gun shooting seriously there are national competitions, including the upcoming Camp Perry Open Jan. 13-17 near Port Clinton, Ohio—see details here: http://thecmp.org/air/cmp-competition-center-event-matches/camp-perry-open.

Purging Fishing Equipment

Fishermen, especially bass fishermen, can never have enough equipment. Anytime anything new hits the market, we buy it. If we don’t have a bait a professional fisherman uses to win a big tournament, you can bet that bait will soon be in our tackle box.

Walk into Berrys Sporting Goods and you will be dazzled by the colors and variety of bass baits. Crankbaits look like little fish but come in colors Mother Nature never dreamed possible. Spinnerbaits look like wire contraptions with spinners on one arm, lead head and skirt on the other and do not look like anything in nature. And many baits look like nothing on earth.

My “tackle box” is a 20-foot bass boat with six storage compartments, several of them big enough for me to get inside and close the lid. And they are all full of rods and lures.

Every few years I try to simplify my fishing, taking rods, lures and worms that I have not used in a couple of years out of the boat. Boxes of those unused lures line my garage wall after a purge, but somehow seem to make their way back into the boat over the next few months, just in case I want to try them.

Preparing for a tournament, I usually rig about 21 rods with baits. Up front on one side of the casting platform I have seven rigged with baits I plan to use, based on time of year we are fishing. On the other side I have seven more rigged with baits I might use. On the back, if I do not have a partner, I have seven more just-in-case baits.

In a typical tournament I use four or five of the ones I plan on using, usually during the first hour. Then I settle down and stick with one or two, usually a jig and a shaky head. Normally I never pick up any of the other rods I have ready.

I’m trying to simplify again. I basically have two color worms I use on my shaky head, and I have a dozen 20 packs of each color so I won’t run out. I am taking out the 30 two-gallon zip loc bags filled with colors I have not used in the past year.

With the jig and pig, I again use two colors of jigs and two colors of matching trailers. I don’t need the 25 other colors of both!

There are crankbaits in my boat I bought back in the 1970s and have been moved from boat to boat nine times, but probably not tied on a line in 40 years. The two-gallon bags of “spare” spinnerbaits have been unused so long their skirts are gummy and hooks are rusty. No point in carrying them.

Even after I finish getting rid of all the unnecessary junk, my boat will still be full. And no doubt things will somehow move back in to my boat during the year, never used and purged again at some future date.

What Is the Oldest Fish Alive?

112-Year-Old Fish has Broken a Longevity Record

By Sean Landsman
from The Fishing Wire

Scientists just added a large, sucker-mouthed fish to the growing list of centenarian animals that will likely outlive you and me.

A new study using bomb radiocarbon dating describes a bigmouth buffalo that lived to a whopping 112 years, crushing the previous known maximum age for the species—26—by more than fourfold.

That makes the bigmouth buffalo, which is native to North America and capable of reaching nearly 80 pounds, the oldest age-validated freshwater bony fish—a group that comprises roughly 12,000 species.

“A fish that lives over 100 years? That’s a big deal,” said Solomon David, assistant professor at Nicholls State University in Louisiana, who was not involved in the study.

In recent years, thanks to more advanced aging techniques, scientists have discovered many species of fish live longer than originally thought—the Greenland shark, for instance, can live past 270 years. Despite the age of fish being a basic aspect of their biology, we often know very little about a fish’s expected lifespan.

Carbon dating

Before the study authors even aged a single fish, they had a hunch that these fish, which live mostly in the northern U.S. and southern Canada, lived longer than thought.

The team removed thin slices of otolith—small calcified structures that help fish balance while they swim—from 386 wild-caught bigmouth buffalo, most of which were harvested by bowfishers. The researchers then used a microscope to count the growth rings on each slice of otolith. Their first counts yielded estimates of fish that live more than 80 and 90 years old. (Related: “Meet the animal that lives for 11,000 years.”)

When study leader Alec Lackmann first saw those numbers, he says his reaction was: “There’s no way!”To validate these extraordinary age estimates, Lackmann, a graduate student at North Dakota State University, and colleagues turned to bomb radiocarbon dating, a well-established method that compares the amount of the isotope carbon-14 in animal tissue to concentrations of carbon-14 released in the mid-1900s during atomic bomb testing. The method has been used to age everything from human remains to sharks.

They then cross-checked their otolith results with bomb radiocarbon dating and found a match—validating the estimates of a lifespan between 80 and 90 years, according to the study, recently published in the journalCommunications Biology.

In total, five bigmouth buffalo surpassed 100 years of age, but a 22-pound female caught near Pelican Rapids, Minnesota, became the 112-year-old record-setter. “She was actually on the smaller end of the mature individuals,” Lackmann notes.

Aging population

The first 16 fish Lackmann aged were all over 80 years old, highlighting another surprising finding: Many of the fish were born prior to 1939, suggesting a reproductive failure spanning decades. The likely cause of this failure is dam construction, which impedes—or outright blocks—upstream movement to spawning grounds.
(See “Rare whales can live to nearly 200, eye tissue reveals.”)

Indeed, bigmouth buffalo are often called “trash fish,” because they’re not usually eaten and are erroneously lumped in with invasive U.S. species like common carp. But Lackmann argues “we should move away from that term, because it maligns far too many native species.

”David agrees, saying that it “automatically detracts value from the organism itself,” which, in the case of the bigmouth buffalo, has an important role in maintaining the health of its native rivers—displacing invasive carp.
(See the overlooked world of freshwater animals.)

Though historically unpopular as a sport fish, the bigmouth buffalo is increasingly a target of bowfishers, which shoot fish with bow-and-arrow, often at night with spotlights.

Almost all U.S. states where bigmouth buffalo are found have no limits on sport or commercial harvests. The fish is not considered threatened in the U. S. but is of special conservation concern in Canada. Lackmann and David hope the discovery of the bigmouth buffalo’s amazing longevity will help boost its profile.“I hope that knowing this cool fact about them will have people look at this species more closely,” David says.

Jackson Tournament and Fool On the Lake

Saturday, December 7, 17 members of the Potato Creek Bassmasters fished our last tournament of the year at Jackson. After eight hours of casting, we brought in 38 12-inch keeper bass weighing about 54 pounds. Almost all of them were spots. There were five five-fish limits and seven fishermen didn’t have keeper.

I won with five weighing 7.89 pounds, Mitchell Cardell placed second with five at 7.11 pounds, Raymond English was third with five at 7.01 pounds and Trent Grainger came in fourth with five weighing 6.42 pounds. Doug Acree had big fish with a 3.27 pounder.

I started on deep rocky banks and fished them all day. My first keeper hit a jig and pig slowly crawled down the dropping rocks at 7:30 and was a 2.98-pound spot, so I had a good start. About an hour later I caught two more keepers on the jig on back to back cast on the end of a rocky point.

At 9:30 I missed two bites on the jig by a log on a bluff bank, then landed my fourth keeper on a shaky head thrown to the same log. I guess the smaller bait got in the fish’s mouth better.

For the next three hours I tried hard but got no bites. Then I tried to skip my bait under a dock, got hung on it and got a bad backlash. After easing up to the dock and getting my bait, I let the boat drift against the dock while picking out the backlash. My jig was hanging off the end of the rod, down in the water about six feet deep by the dock.

My fifth keeper grabbed the jig and about jerked the rod out of my hand, setting the hook on itself. It was on of those fish just meant to be caught. I got another keeper at 1:00 on the same bank as the first one I caught that morning.

With about an hour left to fish I was working up a long point in the middle of a wide cove. My boat was about 50 yards off the bank and pointed toward the bank as I cast to it.

I heard a boat enter the cove behind me to my right. He slowed way down, making a huge wake, went behind me, up the left side of the point then across it in front of me, about 20 yards off the bank. Then he sped up and went further back in the cove.

I don’t know whether he was an idiot, inconsiderate slob, or mad because I was fishing “his” place. He was in a bass boat, and I hate other fishermen that are so stupid. I kept hoping he would run aground on the rocks up shallow on that point. If you fish much, you just have to put up with fools like that.

Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act

House Passes Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act

By Jesse Allen
from The Fishing Wire

Fishing—in particular flyfishing—has inspired me to travel the world, ostensibly to pursue species commonly targeted with fly and light tackle such as bonefish, tarpon and permit. Like most anglers, it’s the encounters with exotic ecosystems and the wildlife they produce that inspires me to explore, rod in hand.

The most unforgettable encounter of my fishing career took place not far from home, in the blue wilderness called the Gulf of Mexico off southeast Texas. It’s an area I fish regularly for a variety of species. On that trip, I targeted sharks. That trip inspired an appreciation for apex predators and the reasons to protect them.

In 2005 Capt. Brandon Shuler guided me to a seamount that rises from about 300 feet to 80 feet of water southeast of Port Mansfield. Massive schools of forage fish, menhaden and pilchards, dappled the calm, green water as they circled the structure, attracting myriad predators to the surface. False albacore and blackfin tunas blitzed through the bait. Amberjacks ambushed from the cover of the reef below. But the sharks were the real “lions” of this watery domain. Thousands of them had aggregated over that reef, presumably to gorge themselves on the bait and gather energy for the rigors of their springtime mating.

I was so enraptured by the scene that Capt. Brandon had to remind me why we came.“Cast, cast,” he shouted, as the biggest blacktip I’ve ever seen crossed the bow heading right to left. I tossed a greenback streamer to the marauding shark. The fish charged the offering, and I set the hook. Between its spinning, high-flying leaps, the fleeing fish spun off line deep into the backing. But Brandon maneuvered the boat to our collective advantages in ways that put maximum pressure on the shark, which allowed us to land it quickly, without thoroughly exhausting the animal.

We photographed it. Then we took the measurements necessary to use in a formula that closely estimates weight. We felt a rush of excitement and relief as we realized we’d broken a Texas state record, while the shark swam vigorously away. The fish, landed on a 12-weight fly rod and 20-pound tippet, weighed and estimated 110 pounds.

No Hands Clapping

My record hardly made a splash in the news at the time. Media coverage of sharks in Texas typically focuses on Mexican lanchas poaching the animals in U.S. waters to sell in the fin trade—a trade that is an international scourge and blight on marine ecosystems.

Sadly, U.S. fishermen and seafood purveyors are still allowed to participate in an industry that is decimating ocean ecosystems around the world. The legal sale of shark fins by U.S. vendors perpetuates the market, one that encourages illegal fishing and overfishing all over the world. Poorly regulated or unregulated shark fishing can and has caused ecosystems to collapse, along with fishing-based economies.

Essential Predators

Depending on the species, sharks are high-level or apex predators. Their positions at the top of food webs put them in charge of removing the weak and the sick from fish and invertebrate populations lower on the food web, and of keeping the food web in balance. Without sharks, populations of predators lower in the food web can grow out of balance.

On a trip to The Bahamas, a nation that has banned commercial shark fishing to protect its ecosystems and tourism, a biologist-turned-fishing-guide taught me how sharks are essential in keeping jack populations in check. If jacks become overpopulated, they eat too many of the parrotfish and other grazers that clean algae from corals and seagrasses. That’s just one way that sharks protect robust, balanced food webs.

Economics 101

Recreational fishing, especially fishing-related travel, is expensive. I shudder to think what I’ve spent over the years getting myself and my expensive equipment into the world’s most sublime waters. Anglers like me drive the massive boat and tackle industries, as well as coastal economies, around the nation, and around the world. But like most anglers, I’m not going to spend hard-earned money to visit places with badly damaged ecosystems devoid of high-level predators. In fact, it angers me when mismanagement of a fishery or ecosystem undermines my investments in our sport.

There are a couple of ways to ruin coastal and marine ecosystems, and the economies they support. Pollution may be the most recognized and recognizable culprit. But overfishing—especially overfishing of high-level predators—especially in combination with pollution and habitat loss—is a quick course to collapse and economic despair.

According to experts, exports of shark fins generates only about $1 million annually for U.S. purveyors. I would wager that anglers spend at least that much in every shark-fishing destination around the country, in places such as Palm Beach, Florida and the Florida Keys, Louisiana, as well as in southeast Texas and Southern California. That’s not counting the goods and services that living sharks provide ecosystems.

Most shark species are easily overfished. They live a long time and reproduce infrequently, giving live birth to a few offspring every few years. Sadly, we are killing sharks at perilous rates, amid mountains of uncertainty, and in changing ecosystems.

By the numbers

U.S. fisheries managers don’t have adequate stock status data for over 62% of domestic shark stocks. Only 12 out of 64 stocks with data are not experiencing overfishing and are not overfished. That’s alarming. One of the driving factors behind shark mortality is the demand for their fins, which I contend should be eliminated in the United States.

Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act (S. 877)

Shark finning is illegal in U.S. waters. However, fins can be sold as part of the whole shark or detached once the shark is onshore. The import/export trade also results in thousands of pounds of shark fins passing through U.S. ports and ending up in our marketplaces. Many of the fins come from countries with lax or non-existent shark-fishing regulations, including countries that still allow shark finning.

By allowing the sale of shark fins, and supporting illegal and unsustainable shark fishing, the United States besmirches its reputation as a leader in marine conservation. In fact, the very practice of shark finning flies in the face a national conservation ethos evidenced by our stewardship of special ecosystems through national parks, self-imposed excise taxes on recreational fishing gear that benefit wildlife, and massive investments in ecosystem restoration initiatives such as Everglades Restoration.

The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act (S. 877), which just passed the U.S. House of Representatives, would prohibit the possession, sale and trade of shark fins in the United States. It would not prohibit the sale of shark meat, including the sale of meat from the increasingly popular and prolific spiny dogfish.Now it’s the Senate’s turn: passing the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act into law would go a long way toward protecting sharks, repairing our reputation as conservationists, and protecting domestic and international ecosystems that drive coastal economies. The Senate needs to pass S. 877 now.

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