Christmas Time!

Silver bells, silver bells, silver bells, silver bells, it’s Christmas time in the lowcountry and man does it feels like Christmas with highs in the low eighties this week. If you are like me you are really struggling this year to get into the Christmas spirit making it even harder to come up with gift ideas for that already hard to buy for sportsman. Since I struggle every year with ideas I usually try to put together a brief list of things to help everyone out. I compiled the bulk of this list over the last couple of years and have added just a few new ideas for this year. Some of these ideas are quite obvious, others may not be; hopefully this will help you figure out a gift for your fishing partner or give you some ideas to put on your own list to Santa.

  • Weather Station – Price Range is from $30 to $300 plus depending on features. My wife got one for me 2-years ago and I use it every day. Mine provides wind speed and direction, current barometric pressure along with pressure trends, air temperature and wind chill. I usually record this info prior leaving the house to fish so I can determine what weather factors contribute to the bite.

  • Log book – From a simple spiral bound notebook to a water proof page book, to a computer database for fishing, all are great gift ideas to track when, where and under what conditions fish are caught.

  • Knives – Quite simply you can never have enough knives. As far as fillet knives, I personally may use up to 3 different knives to clean 1 fish – one to skin, one to fillet, and one to cut bone. Folding fillet knives are nice if you fish on multiple different boats or for travel, long light weight flexible blades are great for skinning, and serrated edge knives are great for cutting through bone. A cheap bait knife is a must as well for cutting bait, line, rigging, etc. I always carry pocket knife as well. I prefer a stainless serrated edge knife with a clip that I can clip to my pocket. Those that fish offshore and work the cockpit usually carry a rescue knife to cu