Work Hard - Play Hard, well kinda...

Well it's about time I continued my story about my trip last month to Santee Cooper South Carolina fishing with Whitey Outlaw and company. This one will be a bit of a picture story. Here's links to the other stories in case you missed them:

Whitey Outlaw's 2016 Santee Writers Camp

How to fish Santee Cooper Grass Mats

Writer Ron Wong (above) stands precariously on top a cooler to get just the right shot. He's photographing over the top of Matt Morgan and Kent Watson on the Lucas Oil boat. As a side note, here's a short video I took of Matt and Kent back when they took first place at the Crappie Masters. Matt did a great job describing their success fishing on the St. Johns River in Florida. Check it out if you get a minute, there are some pretty good insights in it: St. Johns River Crappie Masters Winners




Here's a picture of outdoor writer Ken Cook fishing with Mike Parrott. I had a great time talking and learning from Ken Cook over the couple days we spent together. Many may know Ken from his books and publications. If you get a chance, check out his book: Wild Country: True Stories from the Great OutdoorsTrue Stories from the Great Outdoors. You can find it here on Amazon.




David Baynard (of Driftmaster Rod Holders) is getting ready to go fishing with Whitey Outlaw in the floating grass mats. I love that paint job on Whitey's War Eagle Boat. Or as I like to call it, War Eagle Stump Jumper.




Now I get to go out with Matt Morgan and Kent Watson. We spider rig with 8 BnM rods hanging out of the front end with live minnows on Rockport Rattlers and Road Runners and do pretty good.




Matt photo bombing me and a real nice crappie I caught within a minute of starting our fishing adventure. I caught this on a Road Runner tipped with a large minnow. Spider rigging, yes, spider rigging with Road Runners. Works great, they seem to react to the flash of that blade.




Kent Watson with a beautiful Lake Marion crappie. Lake Marion is the largest lake in South Carolina (roughly 110,000 acres) created when the Santee River was dammed back in the 1940's. The dam itself is 8 miles long! The lake has some of the best Crappie fishing I've seen anywhere. Where I fished, it was like fishing in a forest. Although you had to navigate many stumps, fishing in the trees is rather relaxing. The trees cut any possible wind and makes for some great slow tight line trolling, aka Spider Rigging.




Mike Parrot with a nice handful of Crappies demonstrating the four fish hold made famous here on Crappie.com by member CrappiePro, aka Russ.




Although we did not dock shoot, Mike Parrot showed me the new dock shooter by BnM called the Sharp Shooter. Very nice rod indeed. I tried it out anyway. just shooting a jig to a stump, and it worked real good.




Mike Parrot with the Rockport Rattler boat. Rockport Rattlers tipped with jigs were very productive. I'm not sure if it's the rattle of the minnow shaking the jig head that brought the fish in, or hitting all the stumps we did that rattled the crappie in, but it worked.





Matt Morgan shining up his boat with Lucas Oil Slick Mist. The stuff really works, I received a sample and tried it on my 5th wheel and really like it. Here's a link to a video Matt made about it: Matt Morgan Lucas Slickmist and Super Clean




The multi-day catch kept for our fish fry.





Ron Wong and Whitey showing off a couple nice Crappie.




Ron Wong is not only a great journalist and fisherman (you can follow him on twitter @RonFishin), he also surprised me with making probably the best Hush Puppies I've ever tasted.



These were awesome. I think part of the trick was that there was so much "stuff" inside it. Seemed like there was more vegetables in it than breading. Here's his secret recipe for it, please keep it a secret and do not share:



Thank's go out to all the Outlaw's that made this wonderful get together and delicious meal possible. I'm telling you, Crappie fishermen are the absolute best, and they know how to eat too!

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