Frog Idea Gives Way to Senkos

Brian had a great idea. We would get on the lake well before sunrise and retrieve weedless frogs over and among the weeds. I held onto the idea as if it would really work, but when we got to the lake, Brian said, "I think we're going to get our bass on worms."

We got there plenty early, but didn't find any weeds besides mats of them behind the island where we've never done especially well. It's a mystery why weeds we encountered weeks ago aren't there now.

Nothing hit on the surface wherever we did try, including behind the island and in close to the bank. The sun came up, and where I found myself felt much too lit, so I quickly paddled back to near where Brian and Lisa had left. I took my comfort where trees on the island cast a big shadow. Using a Senko, my first cast resulted in a bass too big not to quickly measure. Twenty inches. Since I sat in my tippy canoe alone, the photo (above) is the best I could do without changing lenses.

I lost a smaller bass before trying a worm that floats on the surface when rigged with only a 2/0 worm hook. I weighted it with a large split shot and quickly changed it out for a Chompers, because the weight just resulted in a heavy mass of weeds reeled in. But the Chompers didn't do much  better than the Senko rigged Wacky, even though I used a worm hook to keep it "weedless." I did catch a 16 1/2-inch bass on it,  and kept using it for awhile, but after Brain and Lisa returned to the area, things changed.

Lisa had caught a 17- or 18-inch bass where they came from, Brian a perch the same size as his Rapala. Soon we enjoyed a better bite than during low light. Within not much more than an hour, Lisa caught three more bass--17, 19, and 18 inches--and Brian two pickerel and a crappie. I caught a pickerel and missed setting the hook into another bass. Most of the fish took Senkos and blue seemed best. But rather than switch to my favorite blue Chompers--I had no blue Senko-type worms--I wanted to see if my red/black Senko (actually Strike King brand) would do as well.

The bass and pickerel hid among weeds. Had I paddled further up the lake before sunrise, I would have found the territory appealing for fishing a frog,  but that's no matter.

As a finishing thought, or you could say back to the day's beginning, I shot sunrise with a 24mm lens, not yet knowing how to select both aperture and shutter speed, so a high ISO is selected automatically. I selected f/14 for depth of field, noticing that the shutter closed much slower than it had for my 50mm lens a moment before. The trees are out of focus. A monopod might have been another way to solve the problem. I do like that sweeping wide angle you can appreciate better by clicking on the photo for an enlargement.