Winter 2022
®
As an outdoor writer, part of my job is to cover fishing tournaments across the country and all told, I will have worked 16 tournaments by the time this year ends. Those events have put us in some of the best fisheries as the best times and dictated our travel plans.
I’ve flown in and out of the nearest airport at times, but generally, we scout another venue between the two events and arrange our campsites along the way. We primarily stay at state parks with the occasional RV park, but all have been close to excellent bass fishing destinations.
THE GOOD AND BAD
As an example of our bad timing, we arrived in South Carolina – Santee Cooper –during a near record-breaking cold front. Even though the air temperatures were in the low 30’s, I still had to see what the lake was all about and landed two bass in a long, bitterly cold day on the water.
One of our next stops was Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri and we decided to explore the area and fish after one of my work assignments. The lake was so cold that it froze each night and a thin sheet of ice covered the lake each morning. The famous lake did not live up to my expectations, and I struggled to get a bite.
Not long after the South Carolina and Missouri cold, we found ourselves in Texas a week after
the famed Lake Fork thawed after a historic cold front froze the lake’s surface. The fishing was poor as those fish are not used to that type of cold and it was a real struggle to find them. The plus side was that the crappie fishing was excellent and their massive size made for some great fun.
All in all, we experienced more good timing than bad along the way as we spent a week on Lake Lanier in Georgia, during absolutely perfect weather with bass in all phases of the spawn.
Later in Michigan, in Traverse City, during the summer, four-pound smallmouth eating marabou hair jigs on light line made up for any tough fishing we experienced along the way.
There have been many other good surprises and spending the two months in the summer around the Great Lakes has been the highlight of the trip so far. Fishing Lake Ontario, Lake St. Clair, and Lake Ontario all lived up to expectations. We were able to catch fish just about anywhere we stopped and with a variety of different techniques.
LESSONS LEARNED
There are plenty of drawbacks from living in a cramped travel trailer and driving constantly, but the
experience of seeing different parts of the
country has been well worth it.
We plan to do this again next year
and have learned that we packed
way too much before beginning the
journey. I’m incredibly guilty of this
when it comes to tackle and filled a
Santee Cooper
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