A Day of Fishing

Saturday, May 15, 2010: Drove into Kenansville this morning to get gas and bait, then drove back to pick up the kayak and go fish. Put in at a creek nearby the trailer. I took the creek out to Lake Marion where the wind was blowing 25+ mph out of the south and there were breaking waves on the lake. I turned around and went back to the put in. After loading up everything again, I drove over to Lake Jackson. I paddled along the edge of the lake out of the wind. There were a TON of alligators in lake Jackson. I saw well over 30 and the largest one was 11 ft +. Managed to pull two small bass from the lake and missed two others. Had problems with the wind and Lilly pads. It sounded like there were a lot of bluegill hitting the surface underneath the pads, but I couldn’t get one to ever hit the fly (I did only throw one type at them though). I paddled back (into the wind of course) and loaded up the Jeep again at around 1700. I decided to try the canal by the observation tower before it got dark since I’d had a hit there the other day. While unloading everything at the canal, I found a grasshopper and threw it in. After only a few moments, it swam right back towards me and less that 2 feet from where I was standing, a big bream came up and ate him.
I launched and paddled north up the canal. The wind had switched by now and was coming from the east southeast so I was sheltered by the trees. Only caught two fish north of the launch along with 2 other misses. I then paddled back as it was getting late. Right before calling it quits at the launch, I cast up along the weeds where the bream from earlier had struck. He hit my fly but managed to avoid the hook. I then noticed another area south of the launch that looked just like the one that this bream had been hiding in. I paddled over and lost a huge bluegill under the boat. I kept moving down the bank until it was almost dark then called it quits. I lost two very big bluegill along that one stretch of bank and also missed 4 other strikes. I’ll have to go back there soon. I switched from the commercial popper to a grasshopper fly that my dad had tied. It obviously worked well. Tomorrow I have to work for about 4 hours so should finish up around noon. Cell signal down here (for T-Mobile at least) sucks. Every time I talk to Chelsea I go silent for a few seconds because I'm cut off which gets really annoying and doesn't help with how badly I miss her. She plans to come down Memorial Day weekend which I'm really looking forward to. Hopefully we can hang out in Orlando some and enjoy some civilization :).