We left the Hatchery Boat Landing on Lake Moultrie at 5:00 PM. There were a number of people fishing nearby, but for a Memorial Day weekend it wasn't overwhelming. We put in our kayaks from the unused little boat ramp to the right of the dock. It was a balmy day with high temperatures and humidity. We were joined by our friend Linda for this Memorial Day weekend fish-n-paddle.
We headed out to the right along the canal, parallel to the levee, and immediately faced a head wind. We thought being among all of those trees would stop the wind. We were wrong. Still, it was not as bad as the wind on a wide open expanse of water. We could comfortably paddle up the canal, but in the enclosed space we had rather large wakes from the passing bass boats. Almost immediately, I took a large wake wave over the bow that provided cooling water and required pulling the scupper plug to drain out water. My seat remained wet for the rest of the trip.
When we arrived at the first cut that leads out to the stump field, we stopped to fish for a while. It was drift fishing with the wind unless we dropped anchor to keep us in place. I caught 2 of the smallest bass known to mankind using yellow RoadRunners and released them (of course). We fished this area for a while and threw everything we had at them. We tried RoadRunners, top water baits, crank baits, RattleTraps, jigs, jigs with worms, and Texas rigged plastic worms. The fish were just not cooperating. We talked to several other groups of fishermen and all of them had similar stories. One group said that they had been there for 4 days in a row with no luck.
We did get to see an osprey family fly in with a fish to feed the youngsters in the nest near the cut. It was mesmerizing to watch them fly in from way up in the sky while screaming to the kiddos below. Ok, so who hasn't screamed at the kiddos from time to time? This was an awesome sight to see, but we had to move on down the canal if we wanted another attempt at catching the elusive large mouth bass.
We moved down to the next cut in the left side levee and while I changed bait the ladies paddled through the cut. I soon followed, of course, so as not to be seen as a girlie man. There was a 3 foot path through what was a solid expanse of lily-pads. This looks like an awesome place to pull out a few bass using plastic worms or other weedless hooks. It also looked like an excellent place for the local alligators to hang out while waiting for a tasty kayakker to drop in for dinner. Not wanting to be dinner, I paddled out the other end of the lily-pad field into the lake. The ladies were at the other side of the lily-pads casting away in an attempt to snag a big fish. We fished for about 1/2 an hour before the rapidly setting sun made us head back through gator country and back towards the takeout point.
The wind stopped blowing on the way back to the boat ramp. The water was flat as a pancake and we had to fight the urge to stay here fishing all night. The sunset was around 8:20 and we were on the water at that time with a bit more paddling before us. We kept up a nice leisurely pace as we paddled back and enjoyed the sunset at The Hatchery.
We arrived back at the landing around 8:35 PM. We were able to take out the kayaks at the same boat ramp that we had left from. We packed up the gear and loaded the kayaks with the headlights from Linda's vehicle. Although the fish were largely uncooperative, we still had a lovely time at The Hatchery! In the future, we need to come back around the April time frame and tear up those bass on the nest in the stump fields. There are no lights at this boat ramp!! It gets VERY dark after sunset and even the people in bass boats were having difficulty finding the dock after dark.
