Pacemaker Fishing Forum

I'm back on!  Now that I am back and settled in NOVA I am back to posting trips regularly (hopefully) and reading yalls post to hopefully learn something as I type out my own trips and from reading about yours.



So this post is a little late do to a busy schedule. 

On Wednesday, March 12, Matt and I headed down to Santee Cooper in South Carolina to fish in the second annual KBF Open.  We checked into our "motel." 



On Thursday we drove around to check out 3 different spots that we potentially might fish on Friday for Day 1.  Didn't do that much fishing, because of the strong winds, but casted a few times for nothing.

Friday was Day 1.  You had to finish in the top 50% to move on, which I was able to do last year, but this year, I SKUNKED!!!  I was pissed at first, but hey it was a great day out and I fished my butt off.  It went to below freezing the night before and dropped the water temps ridiculous amounts.  We started off at a spot that we thought would be the place, as it had great depth changes and there is usually about 3 ft of grass off the bottom.  Well, that grass all died.  We wasted time paddling trying to find it, but couldn't.  Loaded up the truck and headed to a boat ramp 20 min away.  Fished the rest of the day here and neither of us were successful.  Turns out only about 30 people caught fish to move on, they drew names out of a bag to decide the rest that would move on to meet the 50% of entries.  We were not lucky.





Saturday was Day 2.  We went back to the second spot we were at on Friday to try again.  The weather had signifcantly warmed up, which is why we went here.  About 30 minutes in I hooked up with a 20" fish.  Then 30 min later a 18, and then a 14.25 that was a football.  It was on!  Then it died, til the afternoon when I caught a 8" fish, but the we could not get anything to bite and we threw everything at them.  The fish were all caught on a 5' diving square bill in sexy shad.  There was grass off the bottom and it dropped in the canal from 1' to 5'.  There were beds from before the cold snap so we figured the fish had to be close by.  Worked out this morning but that was it. 












This day did turn out to be better than I thought.  Day 2 was a three fish aggregate and I entered the calcutta for day 2, which would only count the fish that were caught on day 2 for those of us who skunked on day 1 and didn't have those 2 fish.  I ended up coming in first with 50.25 inches and won $320 enough to pay for my hotel and gas. 

We headed home around 9pm pulling an all nighter after the awards.  It was a great event that is definitely worth going too!  I hope I can make it next year when the event is on Kentucky Lake!

And btw it was 70 degrees Friday and Saturday!!!!  We need this snow to go away and warm up the water so we can fish!