The Big Rig Experience at Wee Tee Lake

View of Wee Tee Lake

Wee Tee Lake is a freshwater impoundment that was part of the Santee River system. As the Santee River changed its course these changes would leave ponds or lakes which are known as oxbows. Usually these oxbow lakes are in the shape of a “U”, are long in length, and narrow like a river.
So on this trip will be my first freshwater experience with the Jackson Big Rig. Game fish species in Wee Tee Lake are largemouth bass, various species of bream, catfish, bowfin and longnose gar. On this trip I was planning on targeting largemouth bass. My setup will be a Texas rig setup with a 1/8 oz bullet weight, a watermelon color Z-Man Saw Tail WormZ threaded to a Gamakatsu Extra Wide Gap (EWG) Monster 5/0 size hook.
Besides the Jackson Big Rig being tested, I also will be testing the Raymarine Dragonfly, and the Power Pole Micro-Anchor mounted with a GoPro 3 Black. I have used the Raymarine Dragonfly on the Coosa and the Cuda 14. The first thing that I had observed was the fact that the Dragonfly is power hungry. This was really evident when using the fish finder in the duel display mode of CHIRP DownVision and Sonar or the any of the duel screens appears to consume your battery power. In my case I use a 12Volt-10.5AmpHour battery by Gruber Power Service. This sealed AGM battery has enough power for about ten hours of use. What this means to me is that I will need to charge the battery after each day of use to ensure that the fish finder is operational for the entire fishing experience.

There is a battery saver option for the Raymarine Dragonfly. This function actually dims the screen display which reduces battery consumption. To access this option press the power button once and the shortcut menu opens up. Besides the battery saver option, you can also adjust the screen brightness, disabling and enabling the sonar, eject the SD card, or do a screen capture. By adjusting the brightness of the screen will also reduce battery consumption. These little hints have helped me to extend the battery length up to 10 hours.

Wildlife

The Big Rig performed great on the water. I found that the kayak tracked really well when I was fishing the shore line. I did not have to make hardly any adjustments with the paddle or even with the Sea-Lect rudder system. I even noticed the great tracking ability of the Big Rig when standing and casting. The Jackson Big Rig proves to me every time that I fish from this kayak that it is the ultimate fishing platform for fishing for redfish on the flats, bass fishing, fishing for various pike species, etc.

Using the Micro-Anchor on Wee Tee Lake was not possible as the water depth exceeded the length of the anchor pin. So I tested the Micro-Anchor as a GoPro camera mount. The most impressive part of the Micro-Anchor was the camera view. The camera angle view gave the appearance that the video was being taken from an aircraft or a crane from above. Although the water was too deep for the use of the Micro-Anchor I did rise and lower the pole a few times to see what will happen. The big issue in using the Micro-Anchor with a GoPro mounted on top is that the pole does not just travel up and down in a straight line. It actually has a slight twist. This results in the camera angle to move so that there is a chance that the GoPro is not filming in the same direction providing the chance of filming a different scene then what you might think that you are filming.

The fishing on this trip proves to be exceptional. I managed to catch two bream (Warmouths) that measured 8 inches using that 5/0 Monster hook setup. It was hard to even imagine an average bream to take such a large hook but they do have a large mouth when compared to their cousins in the sunfish family. I also managed to catch a very small largemouth bass, a nice bowfin, and a 24 inch longnose gar. A great story about catching the gar was using a presentation by sight fishing. I think that I will need to do a story about targeting the longnose gar from the Big Rig for the future.

I hope that you enjoy the short video about my experience at Wee Tee Lake

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTKQ0pSSPbU[/youtube]