Our South Carolina trip and the wife's new PB

[bluebasser86]

The wife and I spent last week on a private lake, Lake Hampton, in South Carolina with a friend that lives there. The lake is awesome and it has Tiger Bass in it. They look just like largemouth but are more aggressive and grow twice as fast. We didn't catch any of the monsters that have come from the lake but more 3 and 4 pounders than a person should be allowed to catch in a week. There isn't a spot on the lake that doesn't look fishy. This is the view from Jack's backyard, I don't know how he ever gets anything done around the house.

His customized pontoon with a livewell, down imaging on the front and back, 70lb trolling motor with remote control is what we fished out of. I liked their docks on the lake, they're built into the bank instead of being built out into the lake. Lots of fish where pulled from the dock stalls while we were there.

Arrowhead plants lined the banks everywhere along with cattails and various other kinds of vegetation. Lots of bass came shooting out of these weeds to destroy my frog.

I caught more frog fish last week than the rest of my life combined no doubt.
A few of these bridges cross over the lake. Nicole caught a lot of her fish out from under the bridges.

Where do you start when all the banks around you look like this?

Nicole caught a 3 pounder that threw up a foot long eel

so I put on a Yum Mightee worm and caught this fish my first cast.

The last day I got onto them good with a 5" Optimum line through swimbait.

Sight fished this one and the next with the swimbait, awesome.


Nicole and I with our two biggest the last day. Her was her new PB, which beat her previous PB that she'd caught 2 days prior. She caught it on a 5" black blue flake BPS stick O, wacky rigged, which is what she caught all of her bass on. It weighed 4.58 pounds and was the biggest fish of our trip. Probably would have been almost 5 but it threw up an eel that was probably 14" long while she was fighting her.

My biggest was 4.51 pounds and was the very first fish of the trip for me, it ate one of my home made brush jigs under an overhanging tree.

Trip was an absolute blast and Jack and his wife are the nicest people you could ever hope to meet. You know it was a good trip when you have bass palm!