New Personal Best Largemouth - 2/20/16

It is now May 4, 2016. (Insert Star Wars one-liner here).  With work, tax season, winter tackle prep, trying to get on the water, and life in general, the ANGLR Blog has been put on the backburner for a while.  Now it's time to do some catching up.  I have made a list of posts, and I'm eleven posts behind.  So here's a "headline" preview of what's coming up:

1. Today's post - New Personal Best Largemouth - 2/20/16
2. River Bassin' 2016 Kickoff Event - Crawfordville, FL
3. KBF National Championship
4. Nite Ize Field Staff Announcement/Testimonial
5. Etowah River 3/30/16
6. Reel Krazy Season Opener - Brushy Branch - 4/2/16
7. Carters Re-Reg 4/3/16
8. Etowah River 4/13/16 - Doomsday for Big Spots
9. Redfish with Scales N' Tails Kayak Charters, Choctawhatchee Bay, FL
10. First Smallmouth and First Shoal Bass Within Four Days!
11. Reel Krazy - Rocky Mountain PFA

So there's a lot of good content coming hopefully sooner than later.  Fishing season is in full swing and I don't want to get too far behind like this again, so let's get started...

As mentioned in an earlier post around New Year's, one of my resolutions was to add a smallmouth bass to the list of black bass species I have caught.  I was staying with my folks in Tennessee, so I decided to go back where I went for the Chattanooga River Bassin' tournament the previous summer. I caught largemouths and spots in the tournament, but several nearby anglers caught nice smallies.  My plan was to launch at the North Chickamauga Greenway Park, paddle down below the locks and around the barge tie-offs, railroad bridge, and jetty below Chickamauga Dam, and try to get that elusive bronzeback.

It was misty with rain threatening much of the morning, but the temperature was mild for the season in the lower 50's.  The morning started off well as I made my way down the creek, occasionally casting into some of the numerous brush piles and rock outcroppings.  The place just looked fishy that day.  The water color was perfect, hardly anyone else was out, and I couldn't ask for a better situation.

North Chick Greenway Launch

It didn't take long to hook into a couple of small largemouth as I ran my chatterbait parallel to a blowdown for the first one, and swam a grub by a dock for the second.

When I got out close to the dam, I was in for a big surprise.  It had been a while since I had a bite up in the creek, and I was almost to the spot where I was going to target smallmouth.  I casted a soft plastic to a piece of structure, worked it back a few feet and felt something very heavy. Like a log, but it moved.  For the next 45 seconds (it's on GoPro but the footage is a little embarrassing), I was going head-to-head with an absolute hog that weighed in at 6.23 pounds and measured 21" in length and 16.5 in girth.  It was my first fish over 20 inches and my first over 5 pounds, by far.  It took several minutes for me to calm down enough to get photos and measurements, but I managed.

I made my way out to the lock area and downstream structure, and marked lots of suspended fish but was unable to catch any.  At that point, it didn't matter.  I was getting tired and my phone was dead, so I couldn't let anyone know I was okay.  I paddled back up the creek, and caught a nice 3 lb spot along the way measuring 17.25".  So my best 3 for the day were 14.5", 21", and 17.25" for a total of 52.75" - not bad for February!

17.25" spotted bass

Winter Creekin' With Reel Krazy, Part II

When you're "Reel Krazy," you jump at every chance to go fishing when a warm day comes in January.  Or a cold day, for that matter.  The Saturday of January 30th, 2016 happened to be one of those Chamber of Commerce Saturdays that fishermen dream about when the dead of winter rolls around.  Lows in the upper 30's, highs in the upper 50's - just plain pleasant compared to the sometimes miserable weather we come to dread this time of year.

Jason Hopper, Shane Young, Todd West, Zack Turner and I met at one of our favorite waterways - a beautiful, relatively under-pressured stream in northeast Alabama.  I had been to this particular creek twice before.  The first time I caught 24 fish, and the second time I caught 11 fishing a different  section downstream.  We were back on the upper section where I had smoked 'em the previous summer, and I was quite excited to be back.

When I fished this section last summer, the gauge was in the 80-90 CFS range - very low and very scrapy.  On this day, it was a different creek.  Most of the rocks I had to carefully maneuver around in August were submerged, and the shoals were quite swift.  The gauge was around 530 CFS that morning.  Still, the place looked inviting and fishy as ever.

The place lived up to my expectations within five minutes of me being on the water.  After a couple of short strikes on the first few casts, I downsized from a worm to a grub and landed a nice largemouth just upstream of the put-in.  It was 18.75 inches, and had a lamprey attached to its stomach.  I did not weigh the fish, but it was probably not much over 3 pounds because of the parasite. She was long but looked a little bit skinny under the pelvic fins on the Hawg Trough.

Photo by Jason Hopper

Off to a good start

Three casts later I landed another small largemouth, and I got to thinking it was going to be another day like the one I had last summer.

After that, however, things slowed down for quite a while.  A few of us would pick up a fish or two along the way, but none of us were slaying them.  I had brought my GoPro along for its second voyage.  I thought I had the nice largemouth from the first few minutes of the trip on camera, but it turned out I had done something wrong, and did not get any of the footage from that catch.

Later, I would get a decent spotted bass on camera that would turn out to be my first fish caught live on the GoPro.  At this time, I did not have an over-the-shoulder mount setup, so I either had to do the "hero" shot from the bow of the boat, or do a low-angle POV from the Mad Frog Gear dashboard.  The latter was what I used while catching the fish, but I was able to turn it around for a pose and capture a nice still-frame.

One of these days, I hope to be embedding some quality videos within my posts, but right now, trimming and putting together dozens of clips seems like a daunting task. The GoPro software doesn't seem very user-friendly, and my old Mac doesn't have the memory to play 1080p video very smoothly.  However, I did trim down a nice little underwater video of me releasing a largemouth I caught later in the day.

That largemouth was caught in a stretch of slack water that we hit just after lunchtime.  There was a nice set of shoals that provided a bit of a class II rush at 500 CFS, followed by sandbar on river left where we took a break and ate a snack.  I decided to wade fish a bit before we hit the slack stretch, but didn't catch anything.

This particular stretch of slack water we hit after lunch proved to be the best fishing of the day.  All five of us started catching fish, including some really healthy fish.  I even caught my personal best spotted bass - a 18.75" fat girl weighing in around 4.5 pounds.

Zack with a nice one

Shane with a monster largemouth

My personal best spotted bass - Photo by Jason Hopper

At the end of the day, I had pulled in seven bass, with my best three totaling 51.75".  It was not a tournament, of course, but it was a personal best 3-fish total length.  It was a far cry numbers-wise, from catching 24 fish, but the quality of what I did catch more than made up for the decrease in quantity.  Even if the day had turned out to be a complete skunk, it was still nice to take advantage of a nice January day and get out on the water with some good friends.

CBY "Frostbite Biathlon" #1 - January 16, 2016

Since I have bought my kayak, I have been pretty much laser-focused on becoming a better bass angler.  But I was raised on crappie fishing.

An opportunity to do both competitvely presented itself to me a few weeks ago on Chickamauga Lake.  The Chattanooga Bass Yakkers held a casual, for-fun type tournament on January 16th, and the  scoring format was the total length of the best three crappie, plus the length of one bass.  It was a ten dollar buy-in with a pack of plastics or a lure going into the big bass pot.

The last multi-species tournament I entered, I had a really tough time managing my time and focusing on catching different species, and it was a tough bite.  I still haven't figured out exactly how to plan for these types of tournaments, but here's how I tried.

During prep & planning, I asked myself a simple question.  What lures do I have that will effectively catch both crappie and bass?  I came up with a short list:

• inline spinners
• drop shot
• jigs
• beetle spin
• float-n-fly

So it was going to be a light tackle sort of day - not something I'm very used to on a lake like Chickamauga.  I ended up rigging four rods:

• A shakey head setup, because it's my confidence bait for bass.
• A dropper rig with a non-traditional bait - more on that later.
• An ultralight rigged with a panfish magnet under a bobber.
• An ultralight rigged with a regular crappie jig.

The Diablo Amigo rigged and ready at Savannah Bay launch

The morning of the tournament was chilly, but nowhere near unbearable, and the high temperature was going to be in the mid-50's. A dozen of us showed up, and launched around 8 AM from Savannah Bay.  I didn't have to go far to catch my first crappie. I caught it on a panfish magnet by the bridge piling about 20 yards from the launch about a 20 minutes into the day.  Unfortunately, it was too small to reach the increment markings on the Hawg Trough.  I stayed by the pilings a while longer but didn't get another bite from the crappie.  I did miss a hookset on the shakey head, and reeled up just a fish scale about the size of a nickel.  There were reports of some big freshwater drum being caught in the area that day, so I figured that's probably what I missed.  Not the species I was after, but probably would have been a fun fight from the yak.

I had fished a Reel Krazy tournament from the Savannah Bay launch late in the summer of 2015, and caught a limit that included one really nice largemouth in an area near the junction of Savannah and Wolftever creeks a little over a mile from the launch.  I fished a few good looking spots as I started making my way back to that area, and picked up my only keeper size bass of the day off a bluff wall, a 12.5 inch largemouth.

With a bass under my belt, I now had to focus on catching more crappie, but occasionally throwing the shakey head in high-percentage areas to try and cull my bass.

Not long after catching the bass, I pulled another tiny crappie and a bream from a large blowdown.  I fished the blowdown for almost an hour before I headed the area to the creek junction I had planned to spend the rest of the tournament fishing.

The rest of the day was a skunk, except for a small bass taken on a crappie magnet near another brush pile.  I threw the panfish magnet in a couple of different colors, a Bobby Garland minnow on a jighead, and a chartreuse 1/16 oz jig, and got one bite.  I even used a streamer fly on the dropper rig. I had one bite on it as well but no fish. That was a complete shot in the dark - I wanted to try using a fly on a conventional rig.  While I wasn't successful using it, it's something I want to try again sometime because I believe it could work, either on a dropper or drop shot rig.

The crappie needed to grow.

I went back to the 1:00 weigh-in to turn in the photo of my bass, and that 12.5" total was good enough for 7th place out of 12.  We got off the water just in time, because the wind picked up that afternoon and it got very cold.  We all expected better results with the pre-frontal conditions but the crappie bite was slow to almost non-existent. Most of us caught small ones but keepers were hard to come by. The winner of the tournament turned in 32.75" on two crappie and a bass. No one had a full four-fish limit.

Frostbite Biathlon #1* wasn't a complete failure because I caught five fish, and caught the target species.  But it could've been better with some frying pan sized crappie instead of baby ones.

*Frostbite Biathlon #2 was held on 1/30/16 out of Ware Branch, but I did not participate in that one.

Winter Creekin' with Reel Krazy, Part I

Mild weather and a period without much rain made it possible for me and some of the Reel Krazy fellas to hit the creek on January 9th.  It was my first time on this particular creek, and it was quite a nice paddle, not too far from the house, with some good scenery and a few hungry fish.  I met up at the park by the takeout with  Jason Hopper, Jim Clark, Jim Ware, Shane Young and newcomer Zack McElveen that morning, and we took off to the put-in.  Thanks also to Clint Henderson for helping out with the shuttle even though he wasn't able to fish with us. The water was a perfect hue of blue-green and we were all ready to take advantage of the conditions and enjoy the day.

Meeting Up

It didn't take long to get a few bites, but I was missing fish early in the trip.  Eventually, I was able to catch three fish - 2 spotted bass and a largemouth.  The better of the two spots and the largemouth both measured in the 14-15" range.  The last spot really made me happy because it was like getting a birdie on the 18th hole.  I had gone a while without a fish, then finally hooked up on a finesse worm  in a deep hole about 20 yards from the takeout.

Thanks to Jim Ware for the grip-n-grin photos.  Also, check out his blog at Rivergoat Kayak Adventures - you'll enjoy his accounts of his many travels in the plastic boat.  I had met Jim at a couple of events, but this was my first time to share the water with him, get to hear some good stories and talk fishing.

Largemouth in the Channel Bend

Spotted Bass near the Takeout

Stand-up Paddling Among the Rock Formations

Rock Formations at the Takeout

The Reel Krazy Fleet

Ringing in 2016

New Year's is a time in which hope springs eternal - new goals are set, resolutions are made. Aside from my personal, spiritual, and family goals, I set a couple of fishing resolutions as well.  One was to learn some new techniques, and the big one was to catch my first smallmouth and shoal bass.

Those smallmouth and shoalie trips will come later in the year, but I did get to go fishing on January 3rd for the first time in 2016.  I loaded up for an afternoon on Lake Acworth.  I had gotten a GoPro for Christmas, and I was hoping to break it in with some epic footage of a struggle with big bass. Or a small bass. Or a medium sized bass.

I had removed the stock 1/4"-20 screw, and replaced it with a Ram Tough Ball in the well-nut under the back of the carry handle on the bow of my Diablo Amigo, and I had a Ram mount adapter for the camera set up to get that "hero" shot of the hookset and the landing.

Not too long after launching, I found out that I needed to conserve battery life as much as possible.  Forty-five minutes into the trip, the battery was dead.  I had a 64GB card and thought I would get several hours of footage, but did not realize the battery life was only 55 minutes. (I had spent about 10 minutes learning to sync the GoPro with my phone via WiFi, so that cut into my filming time as well).  I did not get a bite in the first hour, so no epic fish fight today - just some paddling and casting.

The southeast fell victim to some major flooding over the Christmas holiday, and while the water levels had receded a lot, there was still a lot of color in the water.  Dark colored jigs and plastics were going to be the order for the day.  Learning how to fish jerkbaits and swimbaits could wait until the water cleared up.  It was my first trip of the year, and I did not want to start 2016 with a skunk.

About two and a half hours went by before I made my way around a point and started casting a 3/8 oz  shaky jighead with a magnum junebug worm.  I was just dragging it on the bottom out from the point, rather than hopping it, and the movement suddenly stopped.  I felt dead weight and gave the rod a good sweep.  The fight had begun with the first fish of 2016, and it was a good one - a 17.5" spotted bass.  It was my only fish of the day, but I went home that night feeling good about the prospects of the new year.  Last winter, I struggled mightily to catch fish, but so far this winter, I have been able to grind it out and keep catching a few on most of my trips.

Thanksgiving 2015 at Carters Lake

Every year, I find I have a long list of things for which I can be thankful.  This year was no different.  I thank God for blessing me with the ability to have the things I need, and even some stuff I want as well.  This Thanksgiving morning, I was able to spend a few hours on Carters Lake before the marathon of eating and watching football commenced.  I was on the road to Doll Mountain ramp near sunrise, and was greeted with a beautiful sight as I drove over the ridge before the steep descent down to the lake.

It was an early launch and the temperature was in the 40's, but it was forecasted to warm up nicely by midday.  The fall had been relatively mild, and I figured I could find a few stragglers left in shallow water.  As I suspected, I was marking some schools in 40-50 feet of water as I crossed the first couple of creek channels.  But, there was a lot of bait still running shallow, so I was confident I could catch my first Carters Lake fish throwing my old reliable trick worms.  Word has it, there are only two colors you need to throw on Carters - green pumpkin and green pumpkin.

A little backstory on Carters...  This was my third time on the lake, and I had been skunked twice the previous winter - once on a day trip to fish for fun, and once in my first kayak bass tournament on a day when the ramp was iced over.  And fishing "shallow" in Carters is a relative term if there ever was one.  It's a deep, clear impoundment - one of the deepest in the eastern United States.  It's not uncommon to be sitting in a boat 20 yards from the bank, and be in 50+ feet deep water.  The depths top 300' near the dam itself.

Within the first hour, I was able to break my drought, and landed a 15" largemouth on a (gasp) green pumpkin worm.  An hour or so later, I landed a 12.5" spot on the opposite side of the same creek mouth.  I paddled all the way back in the creek and didn't get another bite, throwing the worm as well as a chatterbait and a jig.  By this time, my time on the lake was getting short. But there was one main lake point I wanted to paddle up and try before I had to leave.

I made it around the point where the main river channel swings close to the rocky bank, positioned my Amigo over about 17 feet of water and casted into the current and parallel to the bank.  As soon as my shakey head hit the bottom, BANG.  Before I could even engage the reel, I had a bite.  I thumbed the spool immediately and set the hook, as my paddle was in my right hand.  I rested my paddle and finally engaged the reel and could tell the fish was still on, but swimming toward me.  It actually spit the lure once on the way back, but the heartbreak was short-lived as I felt the dead weight a second time.  This time, I drove the hook home and played the fish another 10 seconds or so before I netted my personal best spot.  It was a chunk, just over 18 inches and just over 4 lbs on the Boga Grip.  After a couple of selfies and a Hawg Trough pic, I released the fish to let her grow some more.

As soon as I released that fish, it was time to paddle back to the ramp and head to Jasper for Thanksgiving with family.  I won't soon forget that one.  Best 3 (and only 3) fish totaled 45.5".  These were also the first three fish caught on the shakey heads I had powder-painted myself.

Ketchin' For Kids Tournament Recap, 11/14/15

The night of Friday the 13th, I arrived in Tunnel Hill at my childhood home just before 10:00.  I went inside the house, dropped my duffel bag, and went to the garage to look for a digging tool.  Even seven years after my father's passing, I still keep some of his tools around that house.  I found a mattock and walked through the woods behind my late grandmother's house next door.  I used to grow a garden down there when I was in my teens, and near the edge of it I would throw out scraps that would make good compost.  However, I never used the compost to fertilize my garden.  This is where I dug worms for fishing in local ponds.

I knelt down, headlamp shining, and broke the earth around where I estimated the old worm bed might have been.  Sure enough, I found a dozen or so small earthworms, and put them into a pimento cheese container with a handful of dirt, punched some holes in the lid, and got ready for bed.  In my head, bluegill had already been checked off the list. I would buy minnows the next morning for crappie, and use my artificial lures to chase bass.  As I laid in bed, I realized it may have been the first time I had stayed at that house by myself in the last seven years.  I slept well.

The Ketchin' For Kids tournament is held annually, and hosted by Tullahoma's Grace Chapel and the Southern Mid-Tennessee Kayak Anglers.  The tournament raises funds for local families in need around the holidays.  Most of the prizes in the tournament are not cash, but items available via raffle.  Each entrant gets one raffle ticket for their entry fee, and additional tickets are earned by catching fish.  Up to three tickets are earned for each bass, and each additional species earns one extra ticket.

Early on the morning of the 14th, my plan was partially thwarted when the store I planned to buy minnows from had a "FOR RENT" sign hanging on the door.  I quickly drove to a local sporting goods store, but the only live bait they sold was worms.  I already had my own worms, so I headed back downtown to Grace Chapel for the 9:30 a.m. captain's meeting.  Everyone paid up, turned in their toy for the Tullahoma Fire Department to donate to Toys for Tots, and threw a lure or pack of plastics in the pot for the drawings.  Pastor and fellow kayak fisherman Frank Cole, and SMTNKA's John McClenney reviewed the rules, gave us our identifiers, asked a blessing for our fun and safety, and sent us 33 anglers on our way at 10:00.  We could go to Normandy Lake, Woods Reservoir, or Tims Ford.

I had recently fished the backwaters of Woods during the River Bassin' National Championship, so I had already decided I would go to Woods.  I parked on a point near the Arnold AFB FamCamp and Pumping Station area and was on the water by 10:30.  Having never caught a smallmouth bass, it was both my goal and my plan to fill out my bass limit first, which would hopefully include that elusive first smallie, then go after other species before I had to go back for the 4:45 p.m. check-in.  Launching at 10:30 was a blessing, because the low was 31° that morning.  It was probably around 50° at launch, and the water temperature was around 62°, which was fairly encouraging.  The wind was forecasted to be 5-10 mph, but it was more like a steady 10 mph with gusts to 15-20.  This made it difficult to hold in one spot very long, and made me do a lot more paddling than casting.  After I caught my first bass, a 13.25" largemouth, at 12:30, I realized this was not a day in which I was going to be able to anchor down and catch a limit out of one spot.  These fish had moved out of the pockets where they feed on baitfish in the fall, and had begun their migration back to their deeper winter haunts - they were on the move, and it wasn't to feed.

It was 2:30 before I caught another bass, another 13.25" largemouth, on a bluff wall off a channel bend near the pumping station.  I would have to leave by 4:30 to make the 4:45 weigh-in, so at that point, I reluctantly temporarily abandoned my quest for a smallie.  I picked up my ultralight, and tossed one of my pimento cheese container worms near the bank close to the area where I had caught the previous largemouth.  After several nibbles over about 20 minutes, my bobber finally disappeared and stayed under, and I reeled in the bluegill I was so sure I would catch.  It was tiny, but it was a ticket.  The rest of my time was spent covering water fairly quickly as I made my way back to the truck, hoping to fill out my bass limit.  I never caught a third bass, and didn't get to fight one of those "brown fish" I was so looking forward to fighting.

I milked my time on the water for all it was worth, and walked back into Grace Chapel with no time to spare.  I was the next-to-last person to get back to the church.  I turned in my photos and took my tickets, and shortly the raffle drawings began.

Grace Chapel and SMTNKA did a great job of getting prizes donated for the drawings.  There were two tables full of prizes ranging from hand-poured plastics and locally made crankbaits, to an overnight guided kayak fishing trip and a Duckett Ghost rod.  The sooner your ticket number was called, the better your pick of the prizes.  The only catch was - once you ran out of tickets for the smaller prizes, your chances were lessened for the two major prizes - a FeelFree Lure 11.5 kayak, and an Orion Cooler.

I had four tickets in hand - one for my entry, and three for the fish I caught.  I got pretty lucky and had two of my numbers drawn within the first 10 or so called.  I scored a $50 Hook1 gift certificate and a Backwater Assault Hand Paddle - pretty good pull for a 4" bream!  One other number was called (matching my entry ticket), and I got a few packs of plastics to go on top of the other prizes.

I had one ticket remaining when it was time for the cooler and boat giveaway.  It was the ticket for my first bass.  I did not win the cooler but I was still in the running for the boat.  Pastor Cole called out 5 numbers to be the finalists for the kayak, and my number was not in them.  The finalists could either stay in the running or auction off their ticket. I had already decided I would sell my ticket had I been a finalist.  It was pretty fun to watch all the mind games being played as the field got narrower and narrower.  No one actually ended up selling their ticket, and a winner was decided.  

This is definitely a tournament I look forward to fishing again, although even with one under my belt, I don't know what my strategy will be.  A multi-species tournament is a different ballgame than being 100% focused on bass fishing.  One thing I do know - I seriously need to get this smallmouth monkey off my back sooner than later!