R. D. Holt Reservoir (Lake Butner)

A good friend invited me up to Holt Lake (Lake Butner) for a morning of fishing. If you go to the end of this post I have a google map that calls it Lake Butner, but the sign at the entrance calls it R. D. Holt Reservoir. So I am going to call it Holt Lake. My buddy has a john boat that is set up for fishing on small lakes. It seems that when you go to a new place in the kayak, you spend more time paddling around sight seeing than fishing, so it was nice to troll around and see all of the lake while fishing.



Here is a pick from the boat ramp. The fall foilage was in full effect.













My buddy didn't want his picture taken with such a small bass, so I cropped his head out of the picture to protect his fishing reputation.







Here is a bass that I caught. A lot of people on message boards and such say that you can't catch anything on a spinner bait at Holt Lake. I have only been there once, but I caught 5 bass on a mini-spinner bait and my buddy caught 2 of the 4 bass he caught using a spinner bait. So we fished from about 9 amd to 2 pm and caught 9 bass and all of them would have been keepers except for 2 small ones. Next trip I will bring a crank bait and use my normal sized spinner bait and see if I can hook up with anything with some size. The biggest one we caught on this trip to Holt Lake was about 2.5 pounds.

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Forgot to mention that Crabtree Lake is contaminated.

If you go fishing at Crabtree Lake it is strictly a catch and release kind of place. There used to be a transformer factory upstream that polluted the area with PCB's. They are currently cleaning the factory site, but the fish in Crabtree Lake will be unsafe to eat for some obscene number of years unless you like cancer. It's bad, but Crabtree Lake might become home to some decent sized fish and it is kind of nice to go fishing knowing that you won't have to clean any fish when you get home.

While I was fishing at Crabtree Lake I also saw a hawk. I tried to get a better picture, but as is often the case with birds, it flew off.

Crabtree Lake

Headed out to Crabtree Lake this morning. I caught all three of these fish on the same lure, a mini spinner bait. It has been moved up on my favorite lure ladder. So I knocked out my first catfish, crappy, and bluegill on the same day. Now I just need to start catching bigger fish in the kayak.

Robeson Creek Canoe Access

I heard about the Robeson Creek Canoe Access from my barber. Since he is a way better fisherman than I am I took his advice and tried it out.

It is a pretty long carry to the water if you are by yourself. I had no problem getting everything down the hill and ready. It was a little harder to carry everything up hill after three hours of paddling and fishing.

The river was absolutely beautiful with an early morning fog on it when I first started fishing.

The fog burned off after the sun came out and the river looked like this.

In one of the deep pools behind the many rocks I caught this nice bass. He put up a nice fight and is the first bass I have landed in my kayak. I let him go so good fortune will smile upon me in the future.

So if you have a canoe or kayak and live any where near Jordan Lake you owe it to yourself to make the trip to Robeson Creek Canoe Access. Whether you just like to paddle, or you want to fish you will be happy.

Kayak Fishing in North Carolina

I am new to the sport of kayak fishing. I got hooked when my wife got me a four hour guided tour on a trip to the Outer Banks. I have recently gotten my own kayak and will chronicle my adventures and mis-adventures here. I will be out fitting my kayak for fishing and write up some reviews on the items that I use, so if I purchase something that ends up being junk, you won't have to spend you money on it too. Check back often.