bigbassin'

I’ve got three encounters that take the cake for me, two involving people the other I’ve posted before dealing with a bear. The people encounters are much shorter so I’ll start with those, probably make a second post for the bear. The first person encounter (creepy but not truly threatening): Back in college I entered a tournament as a coangler on Rodman. Boater told me to meet him at the lake at 5:00 AM. I hit the road around 3:30 AM, should put me there about 15 mini early. I’m driving through Ocala National Forest and the fog this particulate morning is thick, I’m probably driving 30 in a 55 due to the limited visibility. I come around a corner and all of the sudden I see the whitest lady I’ve ever seen in my life walking towards me in the lane. I pull into the oncoming traffic lane and hit my breaks to miss her. I come to a stop about 15 feet past her, and watch her turn around like a zombie and start walking towards my truck. I went ahead and got out of there. Since then I’ve had a similar thing happen in almost the same area with a regular looking guy that appeared to have a bit too much to drink. I’ve got several buddies that have similar stories of people walking in the oncoming lane seemingly in the middle of nowhere out in the National Forest and they had to swerve to miss them. The second people encounter: Growing up there was a small river feeding into the St. John’s that was roughly 3-4’ deep in the stretches we liked to fish and was clear enough to sight fish at the tail end of the dry season. Was still typically cool enough at that point that gators weren’t really a huge thought in our minds so we would wade it. Visiting home one spring in college I decided to head to the river and give it a go. I’d recently took up fly-fishing so I brought the 6wt and a handful of clousers with me. On the weekends you would typically run into several people hiking, biking, fishing, kayaking, and camping, but weekdays you may have the place to yourself. This particular trip was in the middle of the week, no other cars in the parking lot. I make it about a half mile up the river, not really catching much when I come up to a deeper bend in the river and I have to get onto a sandbar on the inside bend to continue moving forward. Problem is, 3 guys that don’t really look to be up to much good are already on that sandbar. I try to just walk on by with minimal acknowledgment of them, however one of the guys is trying to strike up a conversation. At the same time, they all stand up and position themselves in a way I’d either have to walk between them or get back in the water to cross. Effectively I’m stuck talking to them. During the conversation, the main just kept going on about how nice my gear was (it wasn’t, but being a flyrod most folks automatically think it must be expensive). Didn’t come across as normal gear talk, but rather a big red flag. After a minute or so, the two guys on the outside start slowly moving off to either one of my sides. I’m aware of this and trying to nonchalantly take a step or two back. I’m thinking at this point I’m about to be jumped and they’re going to steal my rod and waders based on how they were talking. And right this moment…a group of kayakers come around the corner and all 3 of the guys kind of move away from me. I promptly took this opportunity to turn around and head back to my truck. While I’ll never know for sure what their intentions were, I’m pretty comfortable with my assumption. The bear encounter (I’ve posted this one before, did some minor editing to it): As some of y'all may have seen I posted last week, I ran into bears on my last outing. Yesterday's trip I ran into another one only this time was much more terrifying. This is also an extremely long post, so head's up on that. For background I decided to try a creek in the Cohutta's (North Georgia) where 3 creeks merged at around 2600'. Maybe I'd catch one of the unique bass species they have in the mountain range or I'd fins wild trout. After driving to the location, spending quite a bit of time on dirt roads to get to the location, it is very clear based on the overgrown parking lot and lack of trash or other signs of humans that this was not a frequently used trail. At the start of the trip, that's exactly what I was hoping for. As I begin to head down the trail, it becomes pretty clear the descent is much steeper than I expected from Google maps. After descending roughly 800' over the stretch of a half mile, I'm already nearing what I think is the end of trout water, but as I mentioned earlier they have black bass species that live only in this area to target as well. The trail has completely flattened out and parallels the river which has several creeks feeding into from higher elevations, giving me hope the water will be cold enough. For the first two miles the creek is too narrow and shallow for me to even consider trying to fish it. As I make it further in, eventually enough creeks have merged that the water is consistently at least 6 inches deep, with little pools maybe a foot deep, stream is about 6-10' wide. Once I reached this point I began to fish the creek anywhere I could feasibly bushwhack to the bank (there weren't many spots I was able to do this). The whole time I'm hiking in/fishing I'm keeping in eye out for any tracks or signs of bear activity, still a little on edge from last week and knowing that the next person to come along won't just be 10 minutes away like last week. Around the 5 mile mark, I see my first sign that anything else has ever been out there. It's a track, 3" long, 4 fingers, 2 pads on the heel, no claws. Another 50', another track. 50' past that I come up to a 2' tall game trail that appears to lead to a bedding area for something. I’d assume the track belonged to a bobcat or coyote. No claws makes me think cat, but I’d think it was on the big side for a bobcat. I head past the second track, nothing new. I head past the first track, there is now a total of 3 instead of the 1 just a few minutes earlier. I'm very much on edge at this point and for the whole walk back I have some kind of animal calling every few minutes at a distance that sounds like it's always 100' away and in the trees. When I reach the bottom of the hill to climb back the last stretch, I see a bad sign. The third set of tracks I see all day that are not mine or the ones I previously described belong to a bear. Two tracks, each about 5"-6" and based on distancing they belong to the same one at least. Several trees in the area have also had pieces of bark ripped off. Now all of the missing bark was facing downhill, so I convince myself I just wasn't able to see it earlier and I must of missed the tracks. This is about all I can come up with since that trail up is the only way out. Not even 5 steps into my ascent, I found the bear. As I was 90 degrees with a bush to my left, it roared and (at least in my head) the entire bush shook when he did. I was close enough to touch the bush with my left arm. Unlike last week, where I was able to calmly stand my ground and then back off when that didn't work, I completely panicked. My first reaction was to turn my back to the bear and run before realizing what I was doing. As soon as I caught myself, I tuned back towards it, stood tall, arms out and trying to talk as normally as possible as I retreated back 100'. As I'm standing here, I quickly realize I'm at a low spot on all 4 sides with zero visibility forward, backwards, or to my left (2 of the 3 directions the I'd assume the bear would come from if it were to advance on me). Moving to my right by about 30' puts me on slightly higher ground, but also moves me towards the animal calls I've been hearing for 5 straight miles and most likely further reduces my visibility. I decide standing right where I was while everything cooled down was not any better or worse than anything else I could do. After waiting 30 minutes on my watch after the initial bear encounter, I'm still hearing calls to my right but I have not heard the bear in a while. I decide to test with a rock throw in it's direction since I'm getting pretty tired of the calling. The bear very loudly lets me know it is still there. I'm thinking my best odds are a group of hikers or coming down the trail that would have the bear outnumbered and potentially scare it off. I remember how remote the area is and that I did not see a single track or sign showing human life had ever been on the 5 miles I walked. Another thirty minutes go by (both the fastest and slowest 30 minutes of my life). I repeat the process and it plays out exactly the same way, except 5 minutes later I hear the bear snort just a little to the left of where it had been. I wait another 20 minutes or so and now something has changed. I hear the first call from my left instead of my right. It sounds closer, maybe 50' horizontally. It also sounds more vertical like it's from up above me. I try throwing a rock at the bear again, no reaction. I immediately decide that now is my window to get out of here. I grab a pocket of rocks to throw at trees to create ruckus ahead of me to spook anything that may be there and throw one every 30 seconds until I'm out of rocks. This puts me about 400' from the base where all of this occurred and the animal calls stopped. Not totally out of the woods yet (literally) I put some pep in my step and got out of there at a pretty good clip. With only 5 creek chubs to show for the whole ordeal I will never be back to that area again. I also have to say with two encounters in 7 days, and especially with how this one played out, I think any form of adventurous mountain fishing is over for the moment.

Fished for them in Florida quite a bit, fun wading a colder and rockier river than what’s typical in Florida. Kind of like smallmouth fishing for down here. As far as lures, a 3/8 bitsy bug with a speed craw cut in half as a trailer was our top producer (it’s also may of just been because that’s what we threw the most). Throwing just the craw worked but we always seemed to do better with the jig. I think that mostly had to do with placement since jigs are easier to skip back under trees. Red and orange 1.5 size kvds or Rapala DT-4s accounted for our largest catches and were also productive numbers wise. Also, don’t overlook top water. They will aggressively hit a 90 size whopper plopper. Never had any luck with spooks or poppers however.

How do these stack up against the traditional c-tug wheels? Do they work on hard surfaces or are they really just for soft soil? My old C-tug got stolen out of my truck bed, need a new set. Saw these and figured I’d ask if anyone has compared the two. I’m probably launching on pavement or hard grass 90% of the time, soft stuff the other 10%.

Assuming you’re fishing from shore, check out the canals and WMAs in the area. Most of the canals have a public access point somewhere, just need to find where it is on the map. You may need to do a lot of walking to get to on fish. The WMA’s down there have ponds that were pretty good numbers spots when I tried them years ago. Be aware all of those ponds hold multiple large gators and it is hunting season so they are be pretty busy with hog hunters. For whatever reason the roads were probably the least maintained I’ve seen in a WMA, would recommend 4 wheel drive and knowing someone to call if you get stuck.

I’ve never once came across a coyote in the woods. Working nightshift in cities across the Southeast I’ve lost count of how many I’ve seen, typically between the hours of midnight and 4:00 AM. Always seem to see them more frequently if it was rainy. I think there’s quite a good population in most urban areas, they just don’t get seen because their schedule doesn’t align with 95% of people. On top of that, a good number of folks, especially in the city, probably can’t tell the difference between a coyote and a stray dog.

I’d go with Toho in that case. Just about every big bass coming out of the lake is caught using live shiners or punching mats.

I’ve done Toho and Kissimmee out of a kayak, you’ll be fine just watch the wind. Personally I prefer Toho, but most would say you’re splitting hairs between the two. If you’re not comfortable on bodies of water that size but still want to fish the Kissimmee chain, every lake in the chain (including some that could be covered in a day of kayak fishing) are going to hold good fish. You could look to the west at all of the smaller natural lakes in the center of the state as well, most will have good fishing and you won’t see nearly as many folks fishing.

Any pictures of your setup? I have room to improve on the organizational side of things. I was thinking of doing some sort of rack to keep the gun dry instead of sitting in a puddle of water at my feet. Not a huge deal with freshwater, but I would not want to hunt the salt with my current setup.

SUP fishing is relatively popular for saltwater flats and backcountry situations. The main advantage is that it’s a far better sight-fishing platform since you are always standing. For typical bass fishing, I don’t think most people are doing much sight fishing. The exception being the spawn of course. The other advantage is that it’s better for fly fishing. The open front deck with nothing to snag makes for a good area to place your line between casts or even utilize a stripping basket. Again, I don’t think nearly as many bass guys are fly fishing as in the salt. Cons of fishing off one is the lack of storage, slower, can’t handle rough conditions, can’t handle even a slight wind without being blown all over. They are a fun change up, but conditions have to be right to use them. The kayak is definitely a better option in pretty much every situation for conventional bass fishing.

Finally got to give kayak duck hunting a go with teal season opening today. I got one blue wing teal, my first duck ever. Pulled a jerk string as it was flying by and it circled right into the decoys. The two other ducks I saw, 1 wood duck and 1 teal both flew by within 30 seconds of me putting up my blind. I hadn’t had a chance to even pull my shotgun out of the case yet. A lot of fun, I’ll be back out there tomorrow morning. As far as hunting out of the kayak, no stability issues at all, honestly didn’t notice any boat movement while swinging/shooting. Only slight issue I had was my range of motion was limited. I could comfortably swing the barrel on anything to my left, couldn’t seem to have my blind stay out of my way swinging from 12:00 to 2:00.

Largemouth or smallies/spots? On largemouth, flukes are my favorite lure for schooling fish. Normally just cast into the school and let the fluke sink, typically gets hit on the drop. For spots, rattletraps and spooks get the nod. Pretty much can’t work the bait fast enough for schooling spots, traps work well for that. As an added bonus they cast a good ways pretty accurately making it easy to cast wherever the school pops up. I don’t have any experience with schooling smallmouth.

Something like a Zoom Horny Toad, Gambler Magnum Burner Worm, or a paddletail fished as a weightless t-rig would be my first choices in a situation like this.

My biggest topwater bass have all come off bluegill poppers the size of my fingernail while fly fishing. Conversely, I have caught ambitious bluegill on a spook.

Jugging is fairly popular in Georgia, it gets discussed a decent amount on the local forum. Not really something I’ve ever seen in Florida.

If your mostly fishing nymphs, 5x should not be a problem. I’m no means a trout expert, but I typically used 5x or 6x on a dry/dropper or double nymph rig w/ a strike indicator. A bead head Wooly bugger was typically one of my “nymphs”. How far you need to cast will be a factor, most of my fishing was done on creeks with roll cast. I’d say ~45’ is the furthest I ever casted with light leader. I think I could of casted that setup out to 50-55’ if needed, you definitely start losing feel at that distance.

Might be worth trying Sinclair to the South if you get a vehicle. I’d also give wading on the creeks/rivers feeding into both lakes a shot during summertime. Might see a snake but you won’t have to worry about gators.

Sounds like you’re good to go.

I’ve always heard the catfishing on Oconee is great. Might be worth trying for a change of pace.

I’d give punching a shot then, especially once the sun gets up. Fishing the edges with a speed worm, swim bait, or trap would be my first choice in the morning.

That’s not hydrilla. If you break a piece off is it firm or does it turn to mush once you pull it from the water?

I’ve seen more wild blue craws than any other color pattern. Very dark green with blue or orange highlights being the only other color pattern I’ve seen.

There are some good fish in there but it can be tough from what I’ve always heard. I’ve only tried Istokpoga once. Didn’t get a bite in 10 hours of fishing.

I had planned to use the kayak as a blind, just throw some camo on top and back up to the grass line. Are puddlers too spooky for this?

I was figuring something similar on the sled to carry decoys. I think a dog on a kayak wouldn’t go well, figured a rod with a snagging hook and a 1 ounce weight would be my duck retriever. WCS, I can just wade out and grab the duck...if I even get one.

Depending on your rod holder location I could see the concern. I’m always worried about using the rod holders behind the seat for that reason. I’ve got a rod holder situated slightly in front of me where my hand would naturally rest, so I could keep a hand on the rod without any discomfort.