Santee Cats & Crappie

When I finished 2011 with a little largemouth from a pond near home, I sort of wondered what my first fish 0f 2012 would be. Turns out it was a catfish -- specifically a blue catfish -- and it came from Lake Moultrie, better known as "the Lower Lake" by folks in Santee Cooper Country. Nathaniel and I spent a fun day on the lake yesterday with Kevin Davis, owner of Blacks Camp. We split the day in half, catching catfish in the morning and pulling big crappie off deep brushpiles in the afternoon.

The crappie were using brush along the edge of a hump in nearly 30 feet of water. It is cool fishing because from above the surface it looks like you are in the middle of nowhere, but the boat positioning and depth control must be precise. Davis relies on his electronics, marker buoys and trolling motor to keep the boat where it needs to be. He uses two-foot "pulls" of line off the reels to place minnows and jigs at just the right depth, which normally means barely above the bulk of the brush's branches.

Next stop, North Dakota, for walleyes, perch and pike through the ice. That is unless I find myself back on the pond or waist deep in a trout stream some time in the next week or so!