Koz

Well, we're not quite out of the woods yet. It looks like we might get some tropical storm force winds in our area. I spent the day putting up hurricane panels on our house and for family and neighbors. I'm beat. But still have a few more to do in the morning. The next 24-48 hours will be telling. Stay safe everyone.

Governor McMaster lifted the mandatory evacuation order for our county this morning. Years ago Hurricane Hugo just missed us and pummeled Charleston. After the storm my buddies and I would head up there every other weekend with our chainsaws, cases of water, and batteries and just drive down a road and see who needed assistance. For those of you whose homes are in the path of Florence, rest assured there will be countless people doing the same once this storm passes. With all of the craziness in the world and all of the despair some will have after the hurricane, I have no doubt that some of your faith in humanity will be restored. Godspeed.

Love the chatterbait - especially with a Pit Boss trailer!

I've been through this drill before with Hugo, Matthew, and at least half a dozen tropical storms. With that experience we definitely don't take risks. We have bugging out down to a science by now! This is one of those times I'm glad I moved inland and don't live on the beach anymore. As of this morning we're 70 miles south of the hurricane watch area and well out of the predicted strike path. But if the hurricane even looks like it will be within 100 miles of us we'll be heading out. The car is gassed and our bags are packed. This is not a time to be stupid or brave.

This afternoon we received the mandatory evacuation order to bug out on Tuesday. However, we're 250 miles south of Wilmington, NC and about 170 miles south of the southern edge of the warning cone. In other words, we're pretty far away from the current track. At this point I think our Governor was too aggressive with his evacuation order. I think he should have made the evacuation in our area optional for now and let those up north evacuate first. All those folks from the northern part of the state that definitely need to find shelter will head southwest / west and they'll find it very hard to find hotels. It will also bottleneck traffic throughout the state. When Hurricane Matthew hit this area a few years ago there wasn't a hotel room available within 350 miles. Because Matthew was a cat 1/2 many people chose not to evacuate. With Florence being a cat 4 EVERYONE will be evacuating in the target area. At this time we're not planning to evacuate at noon tomorrow (again, the storm track is far away) but we'll keep an eye on it. Bags are packed and the car is gassed to go. If the storm path changes to within 75-100 miles of use we'll hit the road. But right now with the forecast we have it doesn't make sense to leave and clog the roads are take the facilities away from those that really need them. If we need to leave I can always drive far inland, pitch a tent, and fish for a few days.

I enjoy watching the LLWS every year. My son is in the 12U age group but we don't have Little League around this area. Instead, we have Dixie Youth Baseball but his team never made it out of the regionals. This year he skipped spring rec ball and played travel instead, but this fall he's back to rec ball and I'm coaching again. During the LLWS the announcers kept harping on the fact that there weren't as many HR's being hit with the new USA Bats compared to the old USSSA bats. But I didn't hear them give a good explanation. The fact is that the rebound coefficient of the USA bats is more like wood bats than the old USSSA bats. When you think about it, it was kind of ridiculous how far kids could hit those very light drop 10 and drop 12 bats. Using those light bats with high rebound rates all of those years gave kids unrealistic expectations of their hitting. With the old bats, bat speed at impact was king. But with the new bats there is a point where you reach a point of diminishing returns and need more mass to hit the ball out of the park. So all of the talk about reducing the outfield fence distances is ridiculous. Teach kids to swing properly with a heavier bat. When I was a kid all we had were drop 3, 2, and 1 bats and not the super lightweight bats of today. While I'm at it, Little League also needs to move those kids to 70 foot baselines. Every other 11 and 12 year old baseball organization plays with 70 foot baselines and 50 foot mound distances while Little League plays 60 foot baselines and 46 foot mound distances. Little League also plays with 225 foot outfield fences at that age while others play 225 - 250 feet. Now kids need better swing mechanics and heavier bats to hit the ball out. As a coach, I've always advocated that kids swing heavier bats. This way when they reach middle school ball and have to swing the drop 3 BBCOR bats they won't struggle as much. For example, I had my son swinging a drop 8 bat at 10 and 11 years old and at 12 he was swinging a drop 5 and now a BBCOR drop 3. Come spring he'll be ready for middle school or JV ball depending upon where he's selected to play.

We've been sweating out the track of Florence for the past few days now. Thankful that it looks to be passing north of us but praying for those in its path. We went through Hurricane Matthew a few years ago and although it was only a 1/2 when it hit it still did a ton of damage. It took over a year to clean up all of the downed trees. Our area is a bit different than most when it comes to building. Whether it's a home, residential community, or a business the builder cannot simply clear cut and then plant new trees. So when you build a home you need both ARB and county approval for the trees you want to remove. So new homes and businesses are surrounded by mature, hundred plus year old trees. That's great for preservation, but horrible when a hurricane or tropical storm comes through. Last year when tropical storm Irma rolled through my son and I went out bank fishing just for the glory of fishing during the storm. Next to the lagoon we fished there was a large pavilion for storing golf course lawn equipment and we took shelter under that, then fished between the bands of heavy rain. We didn't catch anything, but it sure was exciting!

With water temps reaching their peak recently the fishing at our normal hot spots has been poor lately so I decided to try a new lagoon. It's near one of our productive lagoons and I had driven by and scouted it in the past. It has a few houses along one side, but the rest has some good aquatic vegetation along the shore that we can reach from the bank. But as soon as we pulled up I could see that at least for today we weren't going to be able to fish there. The photos say it all. The house in the background gives you some perspective on the size of this gator. This one had a bit of girth to it. We moved to a second new lagoon that looked promising. There are no houses on it and plenty of laydowns along the back side that you could reach with a decent cast. I started making my way down the length of the lagoon and another big gator showed up. He swam out to let me know I was in his territory but didn't chase my baits. But within a few minutes the skies opened up with a torrential downpour so we called it quits for the day. While the weather is still going to be hot here for a while, the water may cool off a bit soon - but not in a good way. We're keeping an eye on Hurricane Florence right now. We're still within the cone of probability, but so far it looks like it's going to head north of us. Two years ago we got hit with a hurricane and last year with a big tropical storm. I really don't want to have to evacuate again. Fingers crossed...

I don't own a truck. Or an SUV. *GASP*

There's a lot of that going on around here as well. It may be September, but the heat index is still 98-104 most of the day and in the low to mid 90's in the mornings and early evening. With the heat being like this for months the water in our lagoons are at their peak water temperatures for the year. Algae is beginning to bloom even on well maintained lagoons and aquatic vegetation is getting unruly. I fished good producing lagoons for an hour on early Sunday evening on 90 minutes on Monday morning and didn't get a bite. I've fished about 6 hours total in the last two weeks and have only a single 3.5 pounder to show for it. But that's the way it goes this time of year. It's going to still be hot in the daytime down here for another month or so, but the days will be shorter and the evenings cooler so the water will start to cool off a bit. By late October or early November things will start to pick up a bit through the winter. It's funny, I look forward to spring fishing every year until I realize I'm another year older. That's the way it is when you're on the back 9 of life.

I've done the black marker trick and that didn't help. I've used a fluoro leader when drop shotting, but not with other baits. Maybe I'll give that a try sometime. It very well could be a coincidence. Summer fishing here is brutal with the heat and humidity and with that the fishing is always hit and miss. I'll have to compare again in the spring when the fishing here is at its best.

As an older guy with fading eyes, I like fishing with my Power Pro high vis yellow braid. It makes it much easier to keep track of what the line is doing. However, each time I put it n my reel my catch rate goes down considerably. Clear water, stained water, it doesn't matter. I catch less fish. Then I switch back to the same weight green Power Pro and catch more fish. I've done this experiment three times and the results are the same. Now it very well could be a coincidence, even after three tries. But tonight I stripped off the high vis yellow and went back to green braid. Has anyone else noticed the same thing happening?

Black has never worked for me. I had a black Whopper Plopper 130 and never even had a strike on it. But I plan to change that tomorrow. I bought a black Whopper Plopper 90 and I'm going to fish the darn thing until I catch something and break my bad luck streak with black lures. Cloudy skies tomorrow show it should be a decent day for topwaters in the early evening. Fingers crossed...

Dying hound, not clown. Rin Tin Tin as in the German Shepherd dog in silent movies days and later in 1950's TV.

Down here the heat index will keep us in the low to mid 90's for the next month. But the waters should start to cool a few degrees and with that the bass start moving again. When it finally cools off in November we enter our winter rainy season and don't see much of the sun until March.

Bone, without a doubt. Munky Butt and Bluegill have also been good producers for me, but the weird thing is in some lagoons these are consistent producers while in others I've never had a bite. I did have a 130 Loon but never, ever had even a strike on it. On the other hand, when the line snapped the lure went really, really, really far.

With my son back in school and me coaching fall baseball I have not had much time to fish lately. But I had an hour or so of some free time early this evening and went to a small lagoon that I've fished a few times in the past. It's one of the lagoons that you can traverse quickly and along most of the length can cast from one side to the other. There are two large inlet pipes, one of which connects to a much larger lagoon and one to a third lagoon. There's usually bass hanging out around the inlets, and although I haven't caught any large bass there in the past I have caught a few 3 and 4 pounders. Anyway, I fish a few lures and get no bites, so I throw on a 5 inch Yum Dinger and after a few casts I feel the faintest rat-a-tat-tat as my bait gets a few inches inches from shore and I'm in the midst of lifting me line out of the water. And that's when I see it. There's a two and a half inch fingerling bass that latched onto the side of my 5 inch worm! Talk about a predatory instinct. His mouth was so small he couldn't stay latched on to the worm and he laded in the grass. Needless to say I returned him to the water. Unfortunately for me, that was the only strike I had all day. I still chuckle at the fact this little 2 1/2" fingerling bass nailed the side of a worm twice his size.

I'd say a little over 3 pounds.

If the pond is part of the residential community stormwater system and the population of the municipality of over 10,000 residents then the EPA's MS4 Phase II regulations require the removal of excessive nuisance aquatic vegetation - and that includes certain types of floating vegetation including some types of lily pads. Hydrilla is another invasive plant that will be receiving a lot more attention in the future. While that might not be what's best for the bass, it is best for maintaining water quality. The MS4 program has been around for a while, Phase II of the program is targeted to smaller municipalities. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System and MS4 program are requirements of the Clean Water Act. Who does this impact? Just about everyone. The regulation reads, " If you discharge from a point source into the waters of the United States, you need an NPDES permit." And with that permit comes mandated compliance. Many towns and counties don't have the manpower to enforce MS4 compliance programs so they have largely ignored the issue. But the EPA is now sending out auditors to ensure that municipalities are at least beginning to enforce compliance. So, if you live a municipality of 10,000 or more people and your favorite fishing spot has a fair amount of nuisance aquatic vegetation (your DNR will let you know what is nuisance vegetation and what is good vegetation in your area) your lake or pond will be undergoing some changes. The EPA can and will fine municipalities that are not working on compliance. In my area the town has designated fines of $2,500 per day per violation to help ensure compliance. That adds up quickly because most ponds have multiple violations. How do I know all of this? I'm in the stormwater business. There are communities in my area that are looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs in order to meet compliance. And it's all coming to ponds, lakes, and rivers near you!

Mmmmmm.... Spicy fried (Tony Cachere's seasoning) alligator or alligator chili. I haven't had those in a while.

Personally, I don't get that either. But many people are self absorbed or distracted (cell phones!) today that's why I posted this friendly reminder. That incident in Florida a few months ago also involved a dog. My neighbor let her big dog swim in a lagoon until my son went running out there and warned her that an alligator was going to eat her dog. She played it down until he pointed to the alligator slowly moving across the lagoon. Alligators are FAST. If you've seen one move across the water at top speed their tail propels them so fast that it lifts their torso off the water and they look like a hydrofoil boat skimming the surface. In less than 20 seconds they can breach the shoreline from 30+ feet away and drag a person under. They are also stealthy and not always hanging out in open water. I had one hug the bank and creep towards me among the aquatic vegetation. I got out of there before he could get too close. I've also got into the habit of putting on my polarized sunglasses and checking the shoreline where I'm fishing. It only happened once, but I did spot a submerged alligator along the bank. It wasn't a big one, but it still scared the $#&@ out of me. In my own experience I have seen the alligators in our area become much more aggressive. I think that is because we are encroaching more and more on their territory and there are idiots feeding the alligators. I also think that some alligators have "learned" that humans along the bank may mean an easy fish for them to grab. Unfortunately, DNR does not get involved unless there is a tragedy. They leave the responsibility of removing alligators to HOA's, and the HOA's don't want to pay for the tags and critter management services that are required to remove the alligators.

They identified the woman that was killed and she was a local. Both she and a nearby maintenance worker tried to save her dog when she was pulled in. Tragic seems like an understatement.

As it says in my tag line, I'm always good for an alligator story. I've been chased by gators, had them eat my lures, and had them steal bass right off of my line. On occasion, my job also puts me in the path of alligators. My posts here about alligators have been a mix of humor, frustration, and sometimes downright fear. This one is a tale of caution. I have a healthy respect for these beasts and I try to never put myself in a position where they can surprise me or I don't have a quick escape route. Of course, there are others on this board that live in alligator territory as well, and many are more fearless (or reckless) than myself. To each his own on that topic. This morning we had a tragedy just down the road from where I live where a woman was killed by an alligator. The details are still coming in, but it appears she may have been dragged into the lagoon while trying to protect her dog. There's no word on her identity as to whether she's a resident or a tourist. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/08/20/woman-walking-dog-killed-when-alligator-attacks-drags-her-into-south-carolina-lagoon-police-say.html So, this is not a lecture - just a friendly reminder to all those that participate here to always be aware and don't put yourself in a bad position here on our southern shores and waters. When motivated, those slow drifting alligators that you see are blindingly fast. It takes mere seconds for a gator to hit the shore and drag their prey underwater. Even smaller gators are strong enough to drag a human and quickly disorient a person with a "death roll". Be smart. It's very easy to get complacent on the water. Don't be a victim.

I picked up a few Habit Outdoors shirts at Sam's Club earlier this year for about $16 each. They're lightweight until the 92 degree temperature plus 70% humidity kicks in.

Whopper Ploppers are a part of my arsenal and I like to use them (especially Bone, Munky Butt, and Bluegill). However, if I was buying one topwater to be my first topwater it would not be my first choice. So, what would I get? Teckel Sprinker Frog. Why? It's kind of the best of both worlds. You can fish it a bit like a regular frog and it has the paddle tail action like a Whopper Plopper. You can fish it in open water and fish it over weeds and slop without getting hung up. Granted, the hookup rate is lower than with the dual treble hooks of the Whopper Plopper. But it's a very versatile choice for your first topwater.