Fall bass fishing memories

I know the Santee Cooper lakes are man made, but deep in my fishing-soul I’ve wondered if perhaps some heavenly inspiration occurred, allowing the creation of a place as divine as the upper end of Lake Marion for fall bass-fishing action.

Largemouth bass fishing in this setting conjures special memories for me. September and October trips on the upper end of Lake Marion are the core time and place, coupled with fishing with long-time (now-retired), bass fishing guide and good friend, Inky Davis.

Inky Davis guided bass fishermen throughout the Santee Cooper lakes for a generation, and he reveled in catching bass in multiple ways. I’ve fished with him in every season, but the most anticipated and memorable quests were during fall in upper Lake Marion.

Inky targeted areas from Jack’s Creek up to the Railroad Trestle near Pack’s Landing, but expanded his range as needed. An ideal bass-fishing playground anytime of the year, the fall fishing was special because deer hunting and college football lured many fishermen away from the swamps, enabling us to seek, and find, seclusion.

Magical moments

The primary allure for me was the fantastic schooling largemouth bass action, along with the camaraderie of two guys simply bass fishing in an isolated, cypress- and gum-studded watery forest.

If you’ve never met Inky Davis, he’s the guy who never met a bass fisherman he didn’t relate to, and he never met a bass he didn’t want to catch (and release it to catch again on a later trip.)

September means shad begin regularly working points, singular trees, and any woody cover along small ditches coursing through the flats. The bass prowled to ambush passing shad, and we stalked the bass.

Inky began these fall trips with the guidance that at any time and any place, largemouth bass were prone to surface feed on transient schools of shad. This was the heart of the adventure.

But he always asked me for a favor; to set aside my desire to do my due diligence as a writer and photographer in these special moments.

“When a school of bass surfaces, it’s ok to drop the pen, paper and camera, and grab a rod,” he said.

Carrying multiple rods rigged and close at hand was his signature setup, long before it became common practice. But the rig nearest him would be loaded with a Little George, a heavy Tom Mann tailspinner lure, that Inky could air-mail into the next zip code if required to reach a schooling bass.

When largemouth raked a school of shad far from the boat, Inky launched a guided-missile cast toward the target.

Poetry in motion

I’ve wondered if the Air Force created the ‘guided smart bomb’ idea from a spy watching Inky Davis work these schooling fish. He could drop a Little George on a dime far downrange, while simultaneously revving the electric motor into high, closing the gap, mouthing at me to get a lure airborne, and thumbing his reel to adjust the lure to the quickly-changing distance.

It was the personification of poetry in motion.

As he reeled what little slack was in his line, he’d usually set the hook into a shad-fattened, largemouth bass.

The hookset was distinctively followed by two specific actions. First was his loud, cackling, extended, laugh of excitement and pleasure at hooking the bass, followed by a booming, over-the-shoulder query of “You fishing or writing?”

I’d grab my rig, quick-step to the front of the boat to cast. Multi-tasking in these intense moments is apparently ingrained into Inky’s muscle-memory, because while fighting the bass, he’d positioned the boat to a distance a mortal could cover with a Little George, and we’d both be hooked up.

If more than two bass were involved in that initial shad ambush, Inky would swing his fish into the boat, releasing it, while simultaneously scanning for his next target. The ensuing cast was destined to land the lure precisely in the middle of the expanding circle of water left by the last bass to surface feed.

Sometimes the action was short-lived, but if it lingered, Inky maneuvered the boat close enough where we’d use surface-worked lures for truly explosive action.

As time advanced through the fall, the frequency, and duration, of the schooling action increased. All the while the target-fishing produced bass. The best of both bass-fishing worlds in a sense, but while enjoying the target fishing process, the anticipation of the next shad-busting moment lingered as the promise of that shock-and-awe moment we pursued.

Simply two anglers at peace in their bass-fishing heaven, occasionally jolted into real-time with a hookset, and “got-em,” grunt when working a tree or downed log.

But the cherished moments were the silence-busting, water-spraying explosions of largemouth bass mauling unsuspecting shad, magnified by the ear-thumping excitement from my heart.

This was always followed immediately by a cackling laugh as Inky Davis set the hook, followed by the obligatory query of “You fishing or writing?”

Those moments always brought a smile to my face, as the memories do even now.

Making memories:

Bass anglers can have a heap of fun fishing upper Lake Marion in September, and part of that fun extends beyond just reeling in a lunker.