Sunday Ramble

David Hutton Sept 22, 2018

The bugs were buzzing, loudly. 
    Annoying, really, for 7 o'clock in the morning. The thermometer said it was 71 degrees on the porch. It felt a much hotter, and sweat formed on my forehead.

    "Well, here we are...," I muttered, "The first official day of Fall."
Bucky The Cat sat nearby, and turned to watch me gather up my fishing gear. 
Cats are true stoics - he just licked vhis paws and said nothing.

    I put on my vest and tool lanyard, and walked to the truck.
They slipped on easily, comforting me - and they were welcome.
The day before, I forgot to bring these simple things, and it put me off balance. It is often the little things that matter most. 

    So with the bugs buzzing and the cat watching my departure, I wiped the sweat from my eyes and was off to the lake.

Low Water and Gar
    The water is still low at Lake Murray, and that won't change anytime soon. On the plus side, it lets me get around the shore a little easier, and features of the bottom are exposed.
By next season, they will be under water again - like the driftwood root, below. Soon, only the ends of the upright branches will be visible....

    I did notice a lot of big gar cruising around. They seem  to lurk everywhere this time of year, appearing out of nowhere, not three feet from the shore.
    I like gar. I admire any critter that has hung on for 160 million years, and I tried to interest them in some top-water plugs. But gar are the stoics of the aquatic world, and they took no interest in my fakes

    I do catch gar, although it is usually when I don't want to.
In the the past, they have taken the very lure I was throwing today.... when throwing it for something else! 
    That's how it is with gar - they do what they want and you never know just what that's gonna be. So today, they glide on by... only watching.

Keep Out!
    While out and about, I took a side trip to a spot I fished often when I first moved up this way. It is a small spit of land, isolated, with some good features. It has a rough, long-forgotten logging road that allows access..., and that description is generous where roads are concerned. 
    But this day, it is posted, "NO TRESPASSING," and a cable is drawn across the entrance to the old road.  
    This has been a favorite spot of locals to camp and fish for years, and I've picked up a lot of trash that people have left back there.
    But, I guess it wasn't enough to stop the closure. 
    The owners did leave their number on the sign, so who knows, they may be willing to talk about access.

    However, I'm taking this as an omen, insofar as fishing is concerned.  
    My access around the lake is pretty much limited to public venues like boat ramps, picnic sites and the few places remaining like this peninsula. In short, most of the land around the lake has been  privatized, with few places like this remaining. Then, along come the Trash Baboons and other slobs to ruin it.
    So you can't blame the land owners for closing it down.
    What this means is, you either know someone, get permission, or stick to the few public access areas. 
    This will be my wake up call, I guess - it is time to get serious about a boat, if I want to reach all the places to fish.

PS The peninsula's closure actually foreshadowed a larger concern - the peninsula was part of a large land grab that is has now been turned into luxury housing. You want  to talk about a good thing gone bad? This is it - the entire area is permanently off limits.

Slip Floats
    Today, I chose to prospect with my old Daiwa spinning rig, using worms and slip floats. 
    Slip floats are one of my favorite ways to fish; I picked it up when I first got back into fishing about 12 years ago. Prior to that I had never heard of a slip float; if I used any kind of float, it was a plastic, red-and-white, "bobber," clipped to my line.
    Today, I don't use the red-and-white bobbers much at all. Instead I have shifted to bona-fide "slip floats," and prefer them over any other 

    So what is the difference between a slip float and a bobber?
Bobbers, by my definition, are floats that are fit with springs and clips for attaching the float tight to the line. With the bobber thus arranged,  there is a long length of free line dangling below the bobber that hinders the cast. For the most part, they only allow about 3-4 of depth. 
    Floats, on the other hand, usually have a streamlined shape and they lack most of the intricate, clamp-on features of a bobber. The line literally runs through them, which is how they get their name.    But more importantly, adding a float stop on the line somewhere above the float to set the depth, you only cast the hook, a small balancing weight, and the float which slides down to the terminal end. This makes casting super easy.
    Once the rig is cast out in the water, however, the weight affixed below the float pulls the hook and bait down until the stop is reached. Now the bait is maybe 10 feet deep, maybe 15. But the whole rig was maybe a foot or two long when you cast it out.
    Lastly, when you retrieve the rig, it all pulls back up and you again only retrieve the short length that is the float-weight-hook.
    Any depth is possible, and all you have to do to adjust it is slide the float stop up or down the line!

My Slip Floats
    I use store-bought slip floats, or increasingly, I make my own.
It doesn't much matter, really, because they do the same thing either way.
    

Homemade slip float and a hackled Tipping Fly

    For casting, I prefer a balanced, bullet shaped float, like the one above. That one was actually re-cycled from a battered bobber-type found in a bush!
    Long Euro-styled floatss are becoming more popular, and I like them for their sensitivity. But when doing any casting with average length rod and reel, and especially in tight situations, I prefer these bullet types. 

    This is not passive fishing, either. 

• There is depth to constanty adjust
• The balancing weight must adjusted
• Structure and cover has to be worked over carefully
• Bait must be constantly attended to 

    It is really a hunting activity.

    The slip float turned up quite a few smaller fish, so I wasn't skunked. But nothing to test my reels drag was seen. 

    The fish I did manage were holding tight to the available cover - a few feet too far away and you got nothing. But move right in close to the cover, and they'd bite.
    In the picture below, the left side of the toppled tree yielded a lot of these fish, close in to the branches. Meanwhile, the other side wouldn't give up a single bite. Weird....

Look closely in the middle of the picture... stuck in the tree is a cigar shaped, bobber-type neon yellow float.
It is not mine - it is another one lost to the bushes! 

    The other rig I tried was a modified Fish Finder rig, what some call a, "Santee Rig." That is a basic fish finder rig, but with a small float near the terminal end to hold the hook up off the snags near the bottom.
    I wanted to cover the last foot of water near the bottom, and I fan-cast around any area I was in with this set up. There was a lot of submerged wood and the depth breaks were pretty obvious, with the low water conditions. I usually hook up a couple shellcrackers on the worms this way,... but today, nuttin.

    The third rod I carried was a light casting rig for artificials.This consists of an old fly rod with a Zebco 11T spincast reel, and 6 lb test line. Between working the bait rigs, I had a few casts here and there with this ultralight outfit. 
    This little guy was willing... I watched him follow this crankbait all the way to the last foot - and when I paused, the lure hung there - and the fish pounced....

The Old Daiwa

    Tomorrow is another day, just as this one came to its inexorable end. And that's how it goes...each day coming after the one before. In fact, I think tomorrow is gonna be a good day to get some work done on that boat.

Tight Lines, and I hope you learned something from this. If you liked it, a share is appreciated.

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David
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