Thread: Santee bound

Well, Mother Nature does not always favor the fisherman. I went to Stumphole Tuesday morning to find the water high and muddy. I knew Jack's Creek usually ran clear and I had planned to fish there anyway, so I ran over and fished some brush and picked up a few, then things slowed down so I tried casting red worms to see if I could find a bream or shellcracker. Picked up several small bream and one hand size that I put in the well with the crappie. I figured I would get laughed at with my meager creel, but I kept a few decent ones for a fish fry later in the week. (Little did I know!!)


This was my catch, the largest being 12" which was the first one I caught 5 minutes after I got there on a Rooty Tooty 309. Most of the rest I got on a minnow under a slip cork about 10 feet down. I caught a lot of undersize crappie which was unusual in that pattern in that area, but some were barely big enough to take the minnow. Anyway when I got back to the cabin Henry and William came in with one shell cracker!!! Henry has been fishing the stump hole area for 40 years and for the last 5 or 6 years, he fishes at least one week a month so when he comes in fishless it is indeed strange. In their defense they will not keep a shellcracker that is bulging with eggs. They put them back to perpetuate the species (or go in the next guy's cooker). So, meager as it was, my catch was the most anyone had.

My buddy Rick came in from Florida late that afternoon and Wednesday we sat on the porch and watched it rain all day. I had pulled my boat out of the water ahead of the rain, so we decided to trailer the boat over to Jack's Creek Thursday since it was supposed to be chilly early in the day. That turned out to be a wise decision because it was 44 degrees when we left the cabin. A 20 minute ride across the lake would not have been fun.

Boy, did we struggle Thursday. I could not catch a crappie over 8" so we tried to find some crackers or bream with no luck. I probably caught a dozen tiny fish and Rick did not get a bite. We did see Inkdabber early in the day but I did not catch up with him later to see how he did, but maybe he can give us and update. We did talk to two fellows at the ramp that had 20 decent crackers, but that was the most I saw caught.
We got back to the cabin to find that the other guys fishing muddy Stumphole had struck out also. I don't remember the fishing ever being this tough.

We got up this morning(Friday) to 15 MPH winds and white caps. Rick and I decided we had had enough so we decided to come home a day early.
Rick did manage a decent haul though. A huge cypress log had floated up at Henry's dock and he had drug it out. We sawed it into manageable pieces and Rick took several back to Florida to have a couple of tables made. The rings were so close together we could not count them, but this tree had to have been 100 years old. We think it was one that was cut down and lashed to the bottom when the lake was built in the 30s. These logs occasionally break loose and float up like this one did.



Here is a picture of the "catch". Rick bought this truck last year along with a truck camper so he could take his camper and boat when he goes camping in the keys. It is a Quad Cab 3500 Chevy Dually Diesel and it is one honker of a truck. Glad I don't have to park it or put fuel in it.