Koz

For me the Whopper Plopper (110 size) is hit and miss. On some lagoons they just crush it on almost every cast. On other lagoons I can throw it all day long and not get one strike. This even happens with lagoons that are in the same neighborhood and interconnected via the stormwater system. On some lagoons it gets hit on the pop and stop and others on a straight retrieve. What I'm getting at is that if you throw the Whopper Plopper somewhere and it's a complete bust don't give up on it and bury it in your tackle box. Try it at every location you fish and find out where it works.

That lure has a little bit of everything, doesn't it.

Captain Ahab. That elusive double digit bass is my white whale.

If it's a stormwater retention pond (has an inlet pipe and maybe an outlet) and the pond is located in a municipality with a population greater than 10,000 people you may have some recourse. Phase 2 of the Clean Water Act requires stormwater systems to be maintained. Excessive aquatic vegetation and excessive aquatic algae are definitely items that need to be addressed. You can contact your local Watershed Management office and if the above guidelines are met you can ask them to check it out. Enforcement is different around the country, but where I live once a property owner receives a notice of violation they have 60 days to remedy the situation. Your local enforcement may vary.

My suggestion is to utilize Google Earth and look at ALL of the nearby waters around you both big and small. Find ones that look like they have some shoreline to fish, then hop in your car and start fishing them. Small ponds offer some of the best fishing, especially ones a bit out of the way that don't get a lot of fishing pressure.

You're right, especially if the kid is using the proper bat. But half the kids still swing drop 10's and 12's that they can swing all day long. My son swings a drop 5 (he's still a year away from the drop 3 BBCOR standard) and in BP the coaches rapid fire pitches at him thing more swings is better. I told my son to step out of the box and tell the coach he'd rather take 5 good swings instead of 25 bad ones. But they don't get it. The worst part is paying to play for that coaching! Anyway, I better quit now before my ranting takes up my entire afternoon

They had two other fields there, one with scale AT&T Park dimensions (with a pond beyond the RF wall in place of the bay) and one a scale model of Turner Field. It's a tough season for me because this is the first year I am not coaching. The idea was for my son not to play "daddy ball" this year and let someone else teach him skills and drills. Unfortunately, the coaches idea of practice is pounding balls at kids for half the practice and another coach lobbing pitches for the other half of practice. No skills and drills, no hitting coach, no pitching coach, no game situations. The guy is a lousy rec ball coach. The director of the organization had said that the primary coach was a former MLB player. That's true, but the guy is only coaching 11U - and that team is fundamentally sound. The other parents are ticked off as well. I was hoping to have the spring off, but lately my son has regressed. Time to start doing our own workouts again. Oh well, only 2 more tournaments left for the spring season. He won't be playing on that team during the summer.

I bank fish here and most every lagoon I fish has sediment laden water from flowing stormwater. Visibility is less than a foot, so I can't even see if what I landed was a bedded bass. But if I could see and there was a lunker there I'd go for it.

They finished second this week. My son is a pretty good player but he had an off day on Saturday and took an o'fer. Sunday was better and he pounded a few off the top of the fence for doubles but couldn't quite hit it out. He also hit two to the fence that were caught and uncharacteristically K'd 5 times this weekend. That's as many as he's had in the first 20 games. Oh well, he's 12. No big deal. Everybody slumps now and then. It was a pretty cool ballpark with the dimensions modeled after Fenway Park and a pseudo Green Monster (actually a giant scoreboard) that partially covered left field. It wasn't as nice as Shipyard Park, but still a great facility. We played there the other week and some GIANT 12 year old was throwing 79 mph from the 50 foot pitching distance. I swear this kid drove himself to the game and was shaving before the game in the dugout ?

My son had a travel baseball tournament in North Charleston, SC on Saturday and Sunday. While driving up U.S. Highway ALT 17 we saw a a place called Pine Hill Business Campus that had a decent sized body of water right along the roadway. A little further up the road is the Ashley River and lots of lakes and waterways all around the area. As we passed it on Saturday we both thought it would be a great place to try and fish because of its proximity to the ballpark, the road, parking, and a ton of fishable shoreline. So naturally, on our return trip for the Sunday games we brought our fishing poles and tackle to give it a try. The ballparks were only 10 minutes away and we planned to fish for an hour before getting to the field. About 15 minutes in I landed a nice 3 pound largemouth on my trusty white/gray KVD spinnerbait and a Keitech trailer. After releasing it I felt some discomfort in my stomach. A lot of discomfort. Uh-oh! Then discomfort traveled a bit lower, building fast. This was not good at all. I start packing up - quickly. I yelled to my son that we had to go NOW. RIGHT NOW! But he wants just one more cast. As my own panic sets in I hear him yell, "I got one! I got one!" With my luck it will be an epic battle of boy versus fish that will last for hours. As he lands what turns out to be about a 1.5 pounder I'm already at the car. Of course, he can't get the hook out. You've got to be kidding me! Now I'm doing the bathroom dance - and not the #1 kind. It's getting critical. He's 200 feet away and I'm afraid if I move I might erupt. We're no where near a bathroom. I know there's a gas station about a mile down the road. Can I hold it? (Please Lord!) Can I make it? Can my son ever get that fricking hook out? For a second I'm really, really tempted to leave him for a few minutes and race down the road at 110 mph to sweet relief. But I'm not that kind of parent. "Just cut the line! We need to go NOW!" He then yells to me that his fish tool is in my bag. Are you freaking kidding me? I can't even move for fear of Vesuvius erupting from my bowels! I can't wait a second longer. Not. One. Second. I take a quick look around and no cars are coming and no people are around. Thankfully the bicycle riders that were nearby a few minutes earlier are gone. I drop trow alongside some sort of storage / fence area and let it rip. It landed on the ground with a disgusting "squish-plop" instead of a "thud". Of course, I have no TP or paper towels in the car (never again) so I sacrificed the underwear that I was wearing. I did have a few plastic bags to clean up my mess, but of course there wasn't a garbage can in sight. So off it goes into the trunk for the time being. He finally gets the hook out and releases the fish. Too little, too late little buddy. The good news was that there was a Wal Mart a few miles down the road and I did not have to go commando for long. I emptied the trash from the trunk, bought some new undies, and we headed off to the ballpark. Thamkfully there was no lasting smell in the car. I can laugh at it now (and I hope you all get a chuckle) but I was pretty ticked off at the time. At least I caught a decent bass and have a new spot to fish in the future! So, how was your day?

Might want to retire that phrase. Just saying. Here in the SC Lowcountry we're post spawn in most lagoons. Bass have been active and are hitting everything.

Same here in SC. I'll readily admit I'm too scared to go bank fishing at night. Alligators are abundant, even in residential communities. The only time they are removed is if they get aggressive, even the really big ones. We have great fishing here but many of the lagoons have overgrown woody and weedy vegetation along the shoreline making the water tough to access. In the northern part of the state this is no big deal to fish areas like that. But here you never know when a gator is nesting along the shoreline. Everywhere I fish I make sure I have a clear line of site along the waterline and I make sure I have a quick egress if confronted by a gator. When they are in the water, 9 times out of ten the alligator will swim 20-30 feet out in front of you and sit there, letting you know you are on their turf. But 1 in 10 times they keep coming at you right onto the shore. That can definitely make for a very bad day if you're not paying attention - or in the dark.

I have an iBobber and while it works OK I find it very limited. All of our lagoons are only 6-10 feet deep at most so the scan cone is very narrow. Plus, it doesn't do what I need it to do. We bank fish from hundreds of lagoons in our area. What I'm looking for is a device I can cast out and use to map the bottom from various locations, save that data, then more importantly stitch those topographic maps together so at a glance I can look at a topographic overview of the entire lagoon. It looks like the Deeper Pro + can store individual scans but I can't tell if it will stitch the locations together in a larger map or if you can export the scans and create your own larger map. It would be great if it could do the same thing with structure. There have been a lot of man made structures placed in these lagoons to provide cover for bass. I'm going to contact them and ask for more information.

It's kind of the opposite for me. A black and blue chatterbait with a blue craw trailer has been a consistent producer for me. But a football jig or any non-bladed jig rarely produces in our small lagoons. That's probably because our lagoons have "fuzzy" bottoms with lots of thick aquatic algae, so dragging anything along the bottom probably makes it harder for the fish to find the bait. Lift and drop is the preferred method here, but even then I don't catch much on jigs. Lipless cranks work well in my area. But since most of our lagoons are almost all man made stormwater lagoons and only 6 feet deep (and they get hung up in the bottom algae rather than bounce of the bottom) I only fish the occasional shallow diving squarebill.

I only have 110's and fish them on a 6'6" MHF baitcaster with 30 pound braid. I use a snap with everything since I bank fish and only bring 1 or 2 rods with me. On Sunday I fished the Bluegill 110 (also have Bone and Munky Butt) and caught 8 bass in about 45 minutes. Four were between 4 and 5 pounds and nothing under 2 pounds. That was the first time this year bass hit any topwaters in the lagoons I fish. I was beginning to worry that the WP had lost its magic!

You've never seen Jeremy Wade on River Monsters on Discovery Channel or Animal Planet? You should really check it out.

In SC the record is 16 pounds, 2 oz. Record was set in 1949 and tied in 1993. I've seen pictures of a 12 pound bass caught in a nearby private community. It just so happens my father lives there and there are over 300 lagoons with most being connected by the stormwater systems. The biggest I have caught there is 6.5 pounds, but I plan to beat that fishing all summer long. Maybe there's a new record bass hiding out there as well.

Paging Jeremy Wade....

While we don't have them in "packs" like the photo above, with thousands of lagoons in our SC area we have thousands of gators. That's why when I bank fish I always fish in a clearing with good lines of site and not some tiny opening in the woods. I want to make sure I have a quick egress at all times. Just yesterday I was fishing and there was a gator 120 yards away on the opposite bank. I had been fishing there for 10 minutes - even caught a 2 pounder (big enough to make enough nose and get his attention) - and the gator minded his own business. I turned around and went part way up the bank to change lures and when I turned back the gator was moving full speed through the water - on a bee line towards me. Normally a gator will come towards where I am fishing and stay 20 or 30 feet off shore, either waiting for me to catch a fish or just asserting that I am in his territory. Not this one. He kept coming, right onto shore. But by then I had grabbed my tackle back and headed to the top of the embankment. Needless to say I went and fished somewhere else!

I live in an area where there are literally thousands of lagoons to fish and one thing I have learned is is that what catches fish in one lagoon may not catch fish in the lagoon down the street. For example, yesterday in one lagoon a white spinnerbait with a Keitech trailer was just killing it. But not a single strike on a topwater. Fished another lagoon and not one strike on the spinnerbait, but cast after cast they crushed the Whopper Plopper. I wouldn't sweat it. Fish what works and save the Senkos for another body of water or another time of year.

After making the post above I got invited to fish a lagoon in our neighborhood. How could I say no? Only one jumper there, but in 90 minutes landed 10 largemouth and a catfish. The best part is that they were hitting on topwaters for the first time this season and the Whopper Plopper was on fire. A couple of 4.5 pounders and the rest between two and three. Turned out to be a great day fishing. Normally I'd agree with you, but I'm pretty experienced on the water and bass fishing. As I said, both the ones I caught and the ones my son caught all jumped in our morning session. In the evening it was back to "normal" catching.

My son and I went bank fishing for a few hours today and we both had a good day on the water as we each landed 5 bass between 2 and 4 pounds. But the interesting thing was that every single bass we pulled in today breached the water and got big air. I mean they all launched themselves a foot or more out of the water as we reeled them in. I'm no stranger to having a fish breach, but it was unusual that it happened with every single one. The biggest one that I hooked today didn't count as a catch. He breached for the third time right on shore and thudded on the bank and popped the hook out. As I went to grab him he flopped back in the water. It was probably 4-6 pounds, but it's hard to tell if you don't pick it up or weight it. Anyone else ever have a day where every single fish acted like Michael Jordan? The other interesting thing about today is we son and I caught everything on the same bait. They were crushing a white/gray KVD spinnerbait with a Keitech Swing Impact FAT soft bait. The only downside is the bass ripped up the Keitech every time they hit it. It was a one fish, one bait kind of day. After an hour or so the bite stopped and no matter what or where we threw on that small lagoon nothing would bite. It was really, really, really windy out their today so I couldn't throw anything light like a Ned rig. I also had a gator chase me off "his" lagoon today. He was on the opposite bank and when he saw me he came right at me full speed. He didn't even slow up when he got in my vicinity. He just kept coming right up the bank. Needless to say we fished another lagoon after that.

My preference is willow blades and white with silver or grayish skirt for most conditions. If the water is murky I opt for a chartreuse skirt. Another option is a gold color. But if I was forced to pick one, it would be the white with silver or gray. I do not use a trailer hook because those tend to get caught up in weeds if I bring it through aquatic vegetation. And yes, most spinnerbaits are pretty good going through vegetation. I'm pretty sure most of mine are Strike King / KVD and 3/8 oz and 1/2 oz sizes. But I wouldn't get hung up on the brand name. For me the color has been they key. The white/gray has produced in all water conditions for me, from clear to 8 inch visibility.

The first things I would try would be a t-rigged green pumpkin Yum Dinger (cheaper than Senkos), a spinnerbait, or a frog parallel to the shoreline just along the edge of the aquatic vegetation. I'd even run the frog over that aquatic vegetation. For me, this year has been great for fishing a spinnerbait along the shoreline or casting to the edge of an opposite bank.

Before you go spending that kind of money on a GoPro I suggest you check out some of the cheap knockoffs on Amazon. Don't get me wrong, GoPro's are great and in most cases they will be better quality and have an extra feature or two. For example, do you really need 4K video? But you can buy 3, 4, or 5 of these cheaper models for the same price. Sure, they're not 4K video, but if you're just posting videos on the web 720p or 1080p is more than adequate. If you buy three of them you can set up two as stationary cameras on tripods or mounts with the other as a body cam or head cam. Plus, if it accidentally gets dumped in the water (and it will) it's not a crushing blow to your wallet. As a reminder, if you have the waterproof housing on the camera the audio will be almost nil when recording out of the water. Underwater the audio will be muffled. My 12 year old wanted a GoPro but I bought him a $60 knockoff instead and it worked just fine for fishing, biking, and skateboarding. Unfortunately, he barely uses it - so I'm glad I didn't splurge on the GoPro. But whichever one you purchase, make sure you buy a lot of extra batteries. They don't hold a charge for long.