the reel ess

Who fishes the Broad River in SC? I know there are smallmouth in it and I'm looking for an access point for kayak fishing. I've never caught a smallie and this is the shortest drive for me, but I'm unfamiliar with the river. Thanks.

I'm from SC, in the Piedmont. I understand the Reedy R and Upper Saluda R have good fishing. The Broad R is a little east of you but it has smallmouth in it. I want to give it a try one of these days.

Hot dogs, cut into about 1/2" slices will catch the cats and cull the rest of the fish, assuming they're channel cats. But soft shelled turtles like them. I caught my biggest channel cat on a hot dog. Search YouTube for alternate catfish baits. There are plenty that other fish won't touch. Go buy yourself a 20 pack of Zoom Trick Worms. I much prefer the bubble gum color. Texas rig it on a 3/0 offset shank worm hook and fish it weightless. If you're using spinning or spincast gear, you should be able to cast it weightless. Just let it settle and drag it. Occasionally, give it a twitch off the bottom and continue dragging it. You can also fish it with a bullet weight, wacky or Carolina rigged. This bait flat catches the bass-and some big ones. I've had one tied on the same rod for 2 years!

The live bait thing is best for starters because keeping them catching is what will keep his interest. If you decide to target bass, you can put a jig under the float and probably get a few more bass and fewer bluegill. I started out sunfish and crappie fishing. I discovered that a small grub on a ball head jig will catch them all-crappie, bass, bluegill, white bass and even an occasional catfish. Even now, when I go to my buddy's pond that has monster bluegill and lots of small, hungry, dumb bass, I'll take a light combo rigged with a tandem rig of a plain grub in front and a Beetle Spin knockoff in back. Rigged with different bright colors. Sometimes you get a double hookup! Rooster Tails are great. A Mepp's Mino is also a good bet. I like the Rebel Wee Craw and Tiny Craw. The smallest sized jointed Rapala is a good one. I know a lot of people swear by the Ned Rig. I have some pond size spinnerbaits and buzzbaits. Rat L Traps catch a lot as well. As someone mentioned above, the Zoom Trick Worm is fantastic for inexperienced anglers, but there will be a learning curve for being patient, feeling the bite & setting the hook.

The clarity might be 4 feet average. It gets a little more clear when it doesn't rain for a long time. But we almost always have a stain to the waters in the piedmont region. Anywhere there are cypress trees, the water is a dark tea color. I know this is probably good for fishing because I use straight braid for most single hook presentations and even the big bass don't seem to be line shy.

Hey, I finally ID'd a weed correctly. There's a lot of this where I fish. It makes trebles difficult to use. There's a lot more of it on the side that gets more sun. We use a lot of trick Worms, shallow jerkbaits, spinnerbaits and topwaters there.

MH is the all terrain vehicle of bass fishing. It should be the first combo you buy and one you always keep up-to-date. I have two BC and one spinning. It's ready-made for spinnerbaits, buzzbaits, worms, etc. with a single hook. It'll do for most treble hook presentations, but you'll end up losing more fish with it than a medium. 12-15 lb mono is a catch-all line. I have one with 15 lb mono for trebles and the other has braid. Currently, 50 lb, but I'm going to switch it to 30 lb when I change. When you start to notice the action and power is too heavy for some baits and hooks, time to buy a medium combo.

Stop leaving it in the car. My friend leaves a bunch of cheaper combos in his boat with the cover on. He uses Big Game mono and changes several times a year. I've left a couple rods leaning against the wall right over baseboard heaters and it made the line brittle. Wild temp fluctuations will affect mono. But if you change that line to braid, you'd have no problem using it for 2 years or more. I change my mono maybe twice a year.

http://aquaplant.tamu.edu/plant-identification/alphabetical-index/southern-naiad/ Bushy Pondweed?

I always use a trailer hook, but I'm starting to rethink that a little because lately I'm fishing a big pond that has a lot of laydowns from the bank. It looks like the pnd was not cleared except near the dam and most of the trees fell over and stayed. That extra hook can get hung up on laydowns if the place is so thick with them you can't avoid casting over some. The last couple fish I caught there got the main hook. One was 5.0 lb. Even with the trailer hook there are some fish that will come swirl on it but change their mind at the last second. I think it's intimidating to small fish. But for fishing a place that's mostly clear or the cover is still vertical like pier pilings, I ALWAYS USE THE TRAILER. What do you have to lose?

We only have pickerel a few places around here and I've never caught one. Have y'all ever kept and eaten any? How are they? Do you enjoy them or consider them a nuisance?

Doing searches on the interwebs for bass fishing info and videos led me here. I belonged to several message boards, but the formats of most were lame or people just didn't visit often enough to make it worthwhile.

When I was a kid my dad and I mostly fished for crappie. Then we started going with a guy who bass fished. He knew two baits: 6" T rigged worm and medium crankbait. These are still probably the two of the top producers in bass lures. As I got older, I branched out to spinnerbaits, topwaters and everything else that interested me. Now, if it looks like fun to me, I'll try it. If I were to start over, I'd probably take the same approach. Here's some advice on baits. After that, you have to find some fish. That's harder in a big lake than it is in a pond. I prefer to fish smaller bodies of water where at least you KNOW you're getting your bait in front of some fish. A pond you can walk around is even better. The less public it is, the better your odds as well. So ask people who you know own a pond for permission. You'll be surprised how many will say yes. http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/fishing/more-freshwater/1999/12/top-10-bass-lures Or you could just look for another fisherman boyfriend. They make good mates. You know when they're away from you they're only thinking about catching fish.

The lower right might do. But it's hard to argue with one with bite marks all over it. I have tried the bleeding shad color you show there as well as bluegill and red craw for a total of 0 bites. But the gold is golden.

I bought a kayak for my daughter at Dick's. But only because I had a gift card and they never had the spinning combo I wanted to buy, though it was on their site. I didn't want to mail order and pay shipping. Other than that, there's an Academy right down the street. If that's not good enough, there's a Cabela's 10 miles up the interstate.

Academy store brand

Not gold enough. The Trap is VERY gold (online pics don't do it justice) and the Spot is darker gold. I know it sounds like splitting hairs, but it really seems to make a difference.I actually took one of my daughter's markers to it to make it darker gold. But I wore a lot off catching fish and bumpiing bottom. It's probably a confidence thing, but hey, it works.

I have a bunch of Traps, but only use the gold/black one because it kills where I fish most of the time. It's becoming just plastic white from all the use. It has caught me a lot of bass and I'd climb a tree to get it back. But my buddy has even better luck, or so it seems to me, with a CC Spot. I can't vouch for the Red Eye. Since I see they don't have a metallic gold, I probably won't be buying one.

Were they big fish following?

This right here! I had a fish blow up on a frog and take it under three times in the same place before I figured out it was a bluegill. There are BIG bluegill in this place. I've caught one on a Spook.

I've got an old Lowrider rod that would do all these. It's their LFC-5-17 Big Crank 7' MH/MF. They still make it. But I use it as my T-rig rod simply because it's easily the most sensitive rod I own. I have braid on it so hooksets are not an issue.

Yeah. I recently had to throw away some worms that got wet in the bag and discolored. Apparently the bag was not watertight. But those in the article look VERY discolored.

http://www.bassresource.com/fish_biology/skinny-fish.html A BR article on skinny bass retaining plastic in their stomachs. In the picture, they don't look new as they do in the OP.

I've caught a few Quasimoto bass with a hump, but never a question mark belly like that. Very interesting.

I remember remarking that this looks like a lure I could use for a year solid without a bite. A lot of Live target's baits look gimmicky to me. Here's a video of a guy using both frog and sunfish during several hours of the day.