Cold Front puts the Bass Off

Six days ago, while fishing this pond, the trees were brown and leafless, but the weather was sultry and summerlike. When I took my lunch at work today, I looked overhead and judged fishing would be tough this evening. Cloudless sky. Cold front, even though the temperature might have been 70. I came back here to Round Valley Pond with my wife and our Labrador, and before I started fishing the far corner with too much low-angled sun on it, remembered last time how sensitively my fish sense had directed me to the action...when I was more on to prey just as were the bass.

Today, forget it. An ordinary man. An ordinary evening. But it was nice, especially at the end of our stay for me, because I finally sank into the concentrated pleasure of working a Senko slowly, back in that far corner a second time, after I had told my wife we would leave in five minutes, she complaining about the chill, so I couldn't stay as long as I might have, had I been alone. I let that go without any tugging complaint, because you have to strike a deal.

I did catch a little bass less than nine inches in that far corner before we walked out. In the close corner, I missed a strike from another small fish, and then missed a solid bump from another little one immediately after I caught the bass.

You see the calm in the photo. Lots of hatching mayflies led a lot of little forage fish to the surface, some of them sunnies. Not sure otherwise. But when I see sunfish active like this, I tend to deduce from experience that bass aren't. Back when I fished Mount Hope pond a lot, when sunfish played with the worm, the general rule meant bass didn't. No sunfish touched my Senko today, but they sure slurped bugs.

I guess the bass had their heads stuck in the sudden mass of shallow weeds. (That not there less than a week ago.) Or went deep. I fished the Senko a lot as deep as 15 feet.

I must have seen a hundred forage dimple the surface. Clear targets from below in that changing light that advantages bass to see what they can eat. But not a one in all that pond was willing. Not a single bass broke water.


http://littonsfishinglines.blogspot.com/2011/05/round-valley-of-sun.html