Happiness is...

[Chris at Tech]

…a frog bite.

 

Made another of our typical family pilgrimages over to Hilton Head Island a few weeks back for the kids’ spring break.  As usual, I got some rod time in both the freshwater and the salt and I was not disappointed.

 

Hurricane Matthew sure beat up the island a good bit last fall and they’ve made tremendous progress on the cleanup, but one small upside for us fishermen was the addition of some new fallen tree structure to the golf course ponds.  This new structure, compounded by the lines of storms which blew through, made for some good fishing conditions for me.

 

I picked up a few fish here and there on a senko, fluke, chatterbait and T-rigged creature but none of those seemed to be setting the world on fire.  As the wind was picking up a few hours in advance of a line of severe thunderstorms, I had the epiphany – the frog.  Shallow ponds, some muck on the water, shallow bass…why not?  My only concern was that I really was not geared up for this.  All I had was my Kistler Magnesium 6’9” MH/F casting rod and 30 lb braid but I gave it a whirl anyway.

 

It didn’t take long for the bass to show that they agreed with my decision, but as usual it took me a few bites to calm the nerves long enough to actually get a hook lodged.  After 3-4 blowups, I finally got my wits about me and got into a really good rhythm of hook-setting.  And they were eating a frog the way we all want them to eat a frog so needless to say I had me some fun.  And as luck would have it, I got two different afternoon sessions of a strong, pre-frontal frog bite including by biggest bass yet on the HHI golf course ponds (approximating 4+ lbs).  Man, that was fun!

 

Here's a sampling of the action.  And here's the saltwater report

 

 

 

 

 

[Bluebasser86]

Yep, that looks like fun!

[lonnie g]

top water is the best!! nice fish, that's a fun day. congrats!!