Hitting Familiar Water With An Old Friend

Dave and I have been friends over 30 years (I think)...We both fished as kids and rediscovered our love of the pastime as adults.  I haven't fished much since my divorce and the shuffling around of my life and my belongings.  Neither has Dave.  We were talking one evening and we both decided we needed to get out and fish.  Didn't care where but we both needed to feel the tug of a fish on the line.

I believe this was the Good Friday holiday.  We were both off work and a spot we used to fish when we lived in Naperville and Aurora respectively was calling to us.  We got our gear together and followed the siren song to this pond where I caught my first five pounder and where we've both caught some nice largemouth bass.

We settled into a spot and started the process of figuring out what the bass wanted to eat.  The water was murky from spring runoff so I started throwing crankbaits with chartreuse colors thinking they'd be easier to see in the water.  They were easier to see but all ran too deep and brought back weeds, not fish.  Almost on a whim I reached for a lure-type I was ahead of the curve on in my angling circles; a jointed swimbait. Specifically jointed bluegill.  I knew the bass in this pond got fat eating bluegill and figured if they weren't biting loud-colored lures, maybe they'd hit a big-ol bluegill.  They had before.  And they did again!

Rocking my amber lensed, polarized Cocoons fit overs I saw this bass through the glare of the sun on the water and got excited!  This is my first non-ice fishing catch of 2017 and I got it on the same jointed swimmer that I caught my first of 2015 on.  Pretty cool! 

Dave likes to find lures different from what other fishermen are using. That said he had a crazy-jointed swimbait too in a smaller, minnow pattern.  Using a reel up and let it die retrieve Dave hooked up with our second collective bass of the outing.

A nice, fat-bellied, pre-spawn bass came up for a picture.  One each, who will hook up next?

Me!  I got another on my bluegill swimmer.  My second around 2lbs.  Fun catching, but the action was a bit slower compared to years past for this pond.  Still, catching is catching.

Dave would get one more, and here it is.  Another fat-bellied bass.

All in all we had a good outing.  Good conversation, good company, and good catching.  It was a Good-Friday after all.  We talked on the drive back to Dave's house about fishing, catching, and ideas for the next outing.  I was thinking about writing a non-ice fishing blog and then time got away from me.  This is the first blog for open water season for 2017 for me.  I look forward to many more this season.  There's plenty of open water time left and I look forward to fishing it.

First Cast Five!

The 4th of July, Independence Day.  The day most Americans celebrate by cooking out, drinking a beer, and enjoying the company of friends. This year I had the pleasure of celebrating the fourth with my girlfriend Lupita, and my good friends Dave and Monique.

When Dave arrived and brought in his contributions to the day's cookout I noticed a container of nightcrawlers in his cooler.  When I asked he replied yeah, we've got our rods in the car.  I figured we could go fish after dinner.

I thought WOW, that's a great idea!  I've still got my rods at the house so I have one for Lupita. Now to see if she wants to fish.  Great!  So long as we let them go she'll give it a try!  Heck, I almost always catch and release.  Let's go fishing!!

We arrived at a nearby pond and Dave made the first cast near an outflow pipe where water was pouring into the pond.  His float went down.  I was showing Lupita how you make a worm-half without scissors when Dave hollers that he'll need a little help landing his fish.  I hurried over to find he had a NICE bass hooked.

Dave was fishing from the top of a spillway pipe and had no easy way to land his fish.  I leaned in from the bank and lipped Dave's fish.  It was 19 1/4" long and 13 1/2" around.  That calculates to 4.9#!  A first cast five for Dave!!

Pretty soon Lupita was calling out for assistance.  She'd been re-baiting her own hook after bluegills stole her worm and this time her hook found a lip!  Lupita caught her first fish!

It was a cute little bluegill!  I showed Lupita how to work the circle-hook out of the lip of the fish and she admired it's blue coloration and beautiful banding before releasing it back to the pond. Then she said something that did my heart good; I wanna do that again!

Pretty soon Lupita was baiting her own hook, making worm bits out of worms, casting an ultralight (which isn't the easiest type of rod to cast), and catching and releasing her own fish.  I actually got to bait up my line and catch a few fish while Lupita did her own thing catching pretty bluegills and letting them go.  That is until she cast near a line of reeds. Her float went down, she raised the rod tip and reeled in the slack hooking in her words "something heavy"!

It was indeed something heavy!  Certainly heavier than a bluegill! Lupita went from catching her first fish to having a multi-species day landing her first largemouth bass!  She lipped it like a trooper once I showed her how and was very interested in all the patterns and colors on a largemouth.  After a few photos she carefully set the bass into the water near shore and watched as in two flicks of the tail it was gone into the water.

Dave hollered to me that he'd landed a pretty nice bluegill.  He wasn't kidding!  What a beautiful specimen!  I'd love to have a bunch of bluegill that look like that in an aquarium.  I'm pretty sure that's not legal but boy would it be pretty!

Next Lupita hooks a nice sized slab of a bluegill!  I'd better get a worm in the water.

OH YEAH!!!  When you can lip a bluegill you know it's a biggie!!  This was the last fish we caught this evening.  The sun was going down, the mosquitoes were biting my girlfriend, and it was time to think about finding someplace to watch fireworks.

Sometimes a first cast fish is looked at as a curse on the trip.  Almost as if it was too easy and now no one will catch anything.  That wasn't the case however.  We had a great evening, caught fish, and had a fun evening with friends!  If Dave catching a big bass on the first cast helps all future fishing trips may he always catch a first cast five!

Open Water Success (finally!)

It's been too long since I last updated this blog.  It's not that I haven't been out fishing, it's that I haven't been catching much to speak of since ice out.  That changed Saturday for my friends Dave, Monique, and me.  Small pond bass finally got out of their spawn-induced slump and we had figured out what they wanted and how to catch them.

The first pond we stopped at has weeds just starting to form a shallow-water weed line.  Tall grass made casting challenging at times.  I threw a few crank baits early but nothing paid too much attention to them.  It was when I tied on a Z-Man Chatterbait in a bluegill color with a Crabby Bass Crawdaddy trailer I got some largemouth attention.

A nice chunk of a largemouth that hit my chatterbait around four feet from shore; near where a shelf drops off in the pond.  After releasing the bass I made the same cast and slow-reeled the chatterbait back toward the shore.  I was watching the fast-tip of my casting rod do a slow twitching motion in time with the vibrations of the chattering blade.  

My lure should be near shore so I should look down and slow my retrie.....Woah, there comes bass, slow way-down.  The skirt on the chatterbait flares, the claws on the Crabby Bass Crawdaddy flapped, the blade flashed gold, and a big mouth opened up and snatched my lure.

A longer bass and it may be a heavier one.  I didn't bring a scale or tape measure along to measure it.  I was just glad to catch it.  I would catch a few more bass here but fish eluded Dave and Monique.  We decided to hike our way back to the car and head down the road to another pond about the same size as this one.  

The shoreline was mowed and manicured at this pond.  Dave got out his first casting rod; a custom spiral wrapped casting rod with the same specs as the stick I was using today.  It was my way of welcoming him into using a baitcasting reel.  

He had a BPS Egg in bluegill color tied on and 10# Triline Mono spooled onto a Lew's Speedspool. His first cast with the new casting setup he sidearms the Egg in front of a bed of reeds.  I watched as the rod blank arched and loaded up with a bass on the other end of the line. 

A nice bass for his first of the year and the first using a style of reel he was just learning how to use.  Practice casting with rubber casting weights pays off in a day with only three overspins he had to pull out.   Much better than my first time out with casting gear to be sure.

Monique had been using a small paddle-tail swimbait in chartreuse rigged under a float.  I wasn't going to discourage her but I did gently suggest she lose the float and rig the swimbait on a jig-head and cast it.  Off she went to cast at the pond when Dave and I heard her yell.  "Hey, I think I got a fish!"  Soon came confirmation "Yeah, I got a fish!!!  Umm...help?!?"

It turned out all she needed was some direction in what to do.  Once she got her thumb in the bass' mouth she learned the fish generally calms down and gives you time to work the hook back out it. She handled it like a pro after that.  When I joked she was in good company kissing fish and brought up Jimmy Houston she looked confused.  I'll have to send her some links of him kissing bass or Sugar-Boogers as he calls them.  

Dave scored the last fish of the day on a really cool and odd-looking little plug.  A Heddon Crazy Crawler.  

It was great to finally have a good day open water fishing.  We had ice late this year so spring schedules got all out of whack as far as spawning has been concerned.  It's got nature all out of whack trying to adjust.  One thing we all caught that we hadn't intended was something that's been out in force this year; ticks.  Each of us found at least two ticks on us.  We did examine ourselves after we got home but it took a second look to find all of the little buggers.

Do please be careful and check yourselves as you go out into nature! Lyme disease is nothing to mess with!  

As the summer comes and the bass move to more predictable spots I'll be getting out in my kayak more.  I want to spend more time this summer yakking rivers and new bodies of water.  If I catch you'll know because I'll write about it.  Since I started this blog my stats counter has passed 18,000 page views.  I'm geeked to get to 20K!  Thanks to all of you for reading about my fishing!

The Quest for Bronze

I had a problem.  I haven't spent nearly enough time in the rivers and creeks this year.  I hadn't caught a decent smallmouth bass yet in 2013 and the weather was getting cooler.  Plans were made to wade.

Dave caught the trip's first fish; a decent little smallmouth on a worm. I'd get the next smallie on a minnow.  A better fish.

Then another again on a minnow.

Dave realized the fish were preferring minnows today and scored a nicer fish after making the switch.

I saw the copper flash of the side of the fish as it hit my next cast.  I thought it was another decent smallmouth.

It wasn't. It was a decent rock bass.  Time for a rock bass selfie.  (at least I'm not doing the duck-face)

Cast after cast, minnow after minnow we'd pull bronze out of each hole we fished.  The morning was a success in numbers and in quality fish landed.  We knew we'd be happy if we had to call it quits right then but one more hole looked so inviting we had to cast at it.

More quality smallmouth came up for a photo.  Dave had his rod tucked into his wading belt.  His float ten feet from our position.  He asked me to help get a Plano box of floats out of the back pocket of his wading vest when I noticed his float was down.  I grabbed his rod and line between the reel seat and the big sripper guide and pulled tight to set the hook.  Dave took over and reeled in the best fish of the day; 16.5" long 9" girth calculated to 2.25# of bronze!

Dave and I were both happy with the quality of fish today and the excitement of the last catch hadn't worn off before my float went down.

Dave set the tone for my fight when he said "Holy $hi+, that's a GOOD ONE!!"  The fish made two runs.  I used my 7' custom Micro-Wave spinning rod as leverage to steer the fish away from a fallen log.  The fish jumped but I saw the #4 Gamakatsu Octopus-Circle hook was set firmly in it's lip. 

Bronze!  Big bronze!  18" long, 10.5" girth would calculate to 2.75#. WOW!  My biggest smallmouth of 2013 and a little smaller than my personal best.

I was complaining earlier this week I hadn't gotten out and caught my favorite species of fish.  I was complaining I hadn't put on my waders much and walked in moving water this season.  I decided to change that today and I'm glad that I did.  

I was on a Quest for Bronze, and bronze was what I got.

Bass Start Early

One of the things I have learned in the few years I've been fishing is that fish feed at night and the morning bite is usually better than any other part of the day.  Today was no exception.

Dave and I got to the pond we would fish before six AM.  We worked our way to our favorite spot and began calculating how we were going to fish what we could see.  It looked like some weeds grew where I knew there to be a ledge.  I tied a 2/0 Owner cutting point EWG hook to the 15# fluorocarbon with a simple palomar knot.  

I was wanting to fish a Rage Tail plastic called the Shellcracker.  In two times out fishing I've had two bass grab the bait on the drop and on both occasions I didn't get a hook in the fish.  I dragged them up to the surface and watched them let go of the bait.   This time I rigged it up weightless, Texas rigged, and texposed. 

I cast out into the dim light conditions and saw my bait land past some weeds.  I worked it like a stick worm, let it fall then raise it up.  Once I hit the weeds I flipped, flopped, hopped the little bait like a fish out of water on top of the weed growth.  When I reached a hole in the weeds I let the bait flop right in, twitching it once.  

-tap-

Reel down and WHAM!  BASS!!

See, I told you bass start early.  I didn't know if it was luck or not but this bass hit pretty much like I thought it would; on the drop as the "dying brim" floated and twitched it's way to the bottom.  I cast out in a different direction bringing the bait to the weed edge again.  Again flopping, hopping, then drop........Bass!!   

Same cast, same retrieve, and same result.  Dave got one too!!  Nice double!!

The sun was lighting the sky but it still hadn't broken the horizon.  More early-shift bass bit our bait.  Then the finesse plastic bite stopped.  We kept casting but stopped catching.  As all good fishermen do Dave started switching baits, tying on other lures, other colors, other presentations until he found what the bass were wanting.  Swimbaits!!

Dave ran out of Big Hammer Swimbait tails so he decided to pull a Stange and rig up a 5" Berkley Flatback Shad on a Strike King KVD Heavy Cover Swimjig.

First looooooong cast, I hear the swimbait hit the water.  I hear Dave say $h!+, I think I'm snagged.  Then I see it jump and toss it's head back and forth....BASS!!!!!

This would be the biggest we caught weighing in at 4.25# on my Boga-Grip.  She did lots of acrobatic jumps and pulled drag on Dave's spinning reel four times to gain back line.  Here's what she was trying to toss with each jump.

See how completely this bass ate the 5" swimbait tail and the extra inch of swimjig?  The swimbait paddle tail is in the bass' stomach.  This is the textbook definition of the term "She ATE it!"

Needless to say I switched to a swimbait and began to catch bass too.

I didn't keep count but Dave figured I caught 12 and he hooked seven including the 4.25#.  My largest was 3.5# but not a bad morning at all.  

After a short hike back to my car Dave and I loaded rods in the hatchback then headed to his house to enjoy a homebrew.  We flipped through pictures on our phones of the fish we caught and marveled that all fish bit only two styles of lure.  

Early morning the bass were favoring smaller fish sized plastics.  After the sun peeked over the horizon the only thing that caught fish was a larger fish sized swimbaits.  Less than half of our fish were caught once the sun was up.  The bulk of our bass came early.  Bass start early, so I need to start just a bit earlier.  If I get to have this kind of a productive day I'm happy to start early too. 

Early December Crappie

I arrived at Dave's before the sun was up.  That tends to be the way of things when fishing but today it is December 2nd.  The days are still getting shorter and the nights colder.

We're in another weekend "Indian Summer" this weekend with temperatures in the sixties.  I hope the crappies remember they're supposed to bite.  They forget sometimes when the weather swings too wildly in either direction.

After a suspenseful few minutes of having our bait in the water Dave scores first with a nice average crappie for this lake.

Then it was my turn for a crappie to bite my minnow.

Kind of like watching tennis but Dave and I took turns catching crappies and had a great time.

A bonus bass took my float down and came to the surface for a picture.  I eyballed him in the 2# range.  Nice and stocky bass filling up before winter he pulled hard enough to take drag a few times before I landed him.  If you look closely you can see the Custom Jigs and Spins Diamond jig in gold color on his upper lip.

We packed up our things after we used most of the minnows we had brought.  It was a nice morning and a nice time spent out fishing with my friend Dave.  We caught 15-20 quality crappie the biggest being 11.5" but more importantly we enjoyed a morning out catching.

Hopefully we won't have any more of these weekends where we hit 60 degrees in December.  Ice showed up for a fleeting few days as the temperatures stayed down low enough to let it happen last week.  Now we've got 60 degrees.  Winter, come and give us ice!  

Can you tell I'm ready?

Ben Can Catch

Talks about fishing Sunday looked like they were going to fall apart.  Schedules didn't synchronize and thus Dave's two boys would have been home alone while we were out wading.  That wouldn't have been right so what to do on Sunday morning.  The idea hit me while I was running errands on Saturday.  The almost immediate call from Dave meant he thought it too; take his boys out fishing.

We didn't need to get up at O'Dark-thirty since we were fishing for Bluegills.  At nine AM both Zack and Ben looked like it was O'Dark-thirty.  They were up but didn't look completely awake; I can relate some days.

Dave and I tied on slip floats, hooks, and split-shot to one of Dave's rods and the boy's two Zebco 202s then loaded kids and gear into the car and headed for a local pond.

The bluegill action wasn't fast and furious but some largemouth were eating Dave's 4" Yum Dinger plastic worm.  Two bass in quick succession ate the watermelon colored stick worm.  While the boys were watching the bass their father was catching Ben's float went down and stayed there awhile.  Once it was noticed we couldn't see Ben's float as much slack was reeled out of the line as the 202 could muster but the circle hook didn't find home and the float returned to the surface without a worm.

We rotated around the pond and I started catching bass about two and a half feet down near the shore.  That was when Ben started yelling Dad, Dad, Dad, Dad, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.

This time he was watching when his float went down.  Ben knew that he was to watch for it to go down but once the float was down the excitement in his brain didn't let him comprehend what to do next.

"Reel Ben!" instructed Dave.

Reeling like a madman the Zebco Spincast reel caught the line.  The crazed reeling of a six year old finally got the line tight and the circle hook found lip.

After removing the fish and baiting the hook Ben was that much more ready to have the worm cast to the middle of the pond.  Once again he was a patient bobber-watcher until the now familiar chorus of Dad, Dad, Dad, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy occurred when his float went down again.

This time Dave, Zack, and I all said in unison:  REEL BEN!!!  

Bluegill number two proved to be the patience breaker for Ben.  He was excited to catch fish but his bobber-watching patience had ended.  

We got our gear together and walked the short walk back to the cars.  I learned a few things from our outing yesterday; Ben takes direction well and very literally sometimes, Zack can hit me in the neck with Crab Apples from ten paces, and Ben Can Catch!