The Largemouth Lightswitch

I took a trip to Timber Lake in West Chicago.  Timber Lake is part of the DuPage Forest Preserve District and a pretty little pond.  I figured I'd work it over to see what I could catch and then jet on my way to some other location.  I was loaded for bear.  I had five rods two ultralights with live bait on slip floats, a baitcaster with a spinner bait, a baitcaster with a Texas-rigged craw, and a spinning rod with a swim-jig with a Big Hammer trailer.  I walked the pond and worked it but didn't get so much as a nibble.

Well, if this pond didn't want to play nice I figured I'd go to another.  I decided I'd take my two newest rods out and try to catch fish with them.  I picked up an ultralight and a Abu Garcia/Bass Pro combo during a recent sale and I had yet to catch fish with either.  I set my mind the task of doing that right away.  I had wax worms (waxies) and night crawlers and my ultralights and that sounded perfect for catching bluegills.

I drove to a pond I ice fished this past winter and set up my slip float at 3 feet.  Two waxies on a hook and side arm fling later and I was watching my float bob into place...and then bob under the surface and stay down.

Math tells me that 30 waxies divided by two per hook equals fifteen baited hooks.  Some caught two bluegills so I probably had around twenty gills in my walk around this pond that I caught with waxies.  I did have to keep ducking under the cover of tree branches to avoid the spotty rain showers.  

I was enjoying myself and being out of bait wasn't going to stop me.  I remembered the words of Marty aka Wacky Bass on the DuPage Angler forums. Take a Gulp Grub and cut the tail off, thread it on your hook and you've got a bait that bluegills will eat all day.

He was right!  Bluegills loved the grub-body and the thing was practically indestructible.

Then a funny thing happened.  The rain really started to come down.  I plopped down on the dry ground under the cover of a small tree to wait out the rain.  Since there were no other trees around me I could side-arm cast sitting down.  Ok, fling the indestructo-grub with the slip float set at about four feet.  The weights pull the float upright then the float shoots down.  Like a light switch had been thrown the grub that had been catching bluegills now began catching bass.

I caught a few small guys and then a nice little 12" guy which was a hoot on the ultralight.

Once the rain broke I packed up and left.  My day of fishing was fun, I got to prove that the big yellow ultralight can catch fish, and that there exists, if only in my mind a Largemouth Lightswitch.