Where-to-Go Tip for Largemouth Bass: When Fishing is Tough

 When you don't find bass on a large reservoir or lake, you might find some in little, out of the way spots. To catch three bass today fishing from shore on my lunch break at Round Valley Reservoir, after persistently fishing along the breakline from four or five feet down to 10 to 15 with Strike King Senko-type worms and Chompers seven inch, I hiked nearly a half mile to a sort of cove. As you can see in the photo below, banking trees cut off the breeze and eddied pollen and other life-stuff onto the surface. With evidence of life around, including an overhanging willow, a few bass mixed in the fray. This little cove produced because of the soft structure element: I think it was the pollen and stuff, as if the bass could just smell that this might bring in some fish forage.

A bet no boat advantaged bass fishermen on this reservoir with water so clear that largemouth bass spawn 10 feet deep would bother trying this spot. Being on foot gives you an entirely different perspective and sense of time involvement--you can fish a small, shallow area with more patience. I had 10 or 15 minutes left and caught all three--one from under the willow, the other two in the calm water with stuff on it--in about two feet of water.

I've enjoyed recent low hanging clouds and rain. Today cloud cover for the most part spat a few light showers. Yesterday, clouds hung low, continuing the ominous mood present for about a week, which may have put most people in that disagreeable suspense, but I find grand and suggestive of solitude since fewer endeavor in it. It doesn't depress me. Such weather (usually better for fishing) correlates with my appreciations for German writers like Nietzsche and Goethe, rather than Americans like Zane Grey and Mark Twain full of sunshine and leaps more like rainbow trout than browns. (Browns don't leap and happen to be from Germany.) Americans are suspicious of those German writers because of what happened after them. But they weren't entirely responsible for the Nazi's, and if they help you get in the mood for better fishing, all the power to that.

As evidenced by the photograph of one of the bass, they don't seem to spawning in the reservoir yet, although it could have been stuffed with forage. But my brother Rick and I once fished from one of the boats I owned years ago to withness males guarding beds on June 10th. Not only is the water deep and superclear, thus taking long to warm--10 foot depths have to warm to stable afternoon 65 degree temperatures