Bass Return to Neighborhood Pond

Got off work an hour early, and before long decided I did not want to reduce desire to fish the pond out back to temptation. We had a couple of super-severe winters in the middle of the past decade, the second of which greatly decimated the pond's bass population. The pond is so shallow that most of it froze to the bottom. For a year or two thereafter, we still caught some bass. And some nice ones. I recall one April evening when I caught eight within a half hour, the biggest about 17 inches, most of them 14 or 15. We figured the pond would bounce back. Why not? With that many adults laying eggs, you would think so.

It didn't play out that way. The fishing went from so-so, compared to how good it was before the big freeze, to almost non-productive. Any of  us here in Bedminster would go and get skunked. I don't know why. No one else seems to, either.

Good news tonight is that there are quite a few little nine-inchers now.  I caught the one in the photo, and missed hits from three others, the third taking my worm. That's when I quit, before 10 minutes were up, because I didn't bring along a second. I grabbed my rod, already rigged, took my camera and fishing license, keeping it simple.

Whether this pond ever again yields 10 bass over two pounds in a half hour, who knows. Many years ago, when I began fishing it, average size was about 11 inches. Why that average increased to about 16 inches, again, I don't know.

Maybe before we moved to Bedminster, it had a fish kill like the recent. I do know the winter of '93, '94 was severe.

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.

Floodplain a Mess

"You would think an alligator would crawl out and come after you," Matt said about the river. Once it floods, it seems as if it will never come back down. The tropical storm that dumped so much water on us more than a week ago is responsible. At least the river has some clarity now, but so much water is on the floodplain, access involved a lot of messy trudging through mud and was very limited. We could not get very far up or downstream, because water had filled deep gullies.

All three of us got hits, but only Oliver and I caught pike. His was about 18 inches, and mine might have been 21. I had another on, very small, and missed three other hits. I tried a spot Matt was reluctant to claim ahead of me, where I had to stand on a rotting stump. A pike that must have been at least 28 inches long rushed my plug, bulging the water largely and leaving a huge boil. The encounter with the fish sank into me deeply, I want to bank a pike like that.

It's one thing to know really big pike exist in the river. It's another to have stirred the interest of a fairly good one. Merely to know isn't enough. Even a 28-inch pike, much smaller than some over 45 inches in the river, would be a good start on something more for me. The 20-incher I caught last time felt good. So did the  pike I caught this morning, but the big one was an invitation to the next level.

Like last time, I practiced both my casting and retrieving. I have plenty to learn, but despite abundant wood in the water I cast to, I never lost a plug. That could be interpreted as evidence of my not getting close enough to it, but you will just have to take my word that plenty of times I did get the plug right alongside. On one occasion, Matt had cast alongside a big branch in the water that collected stuff and scum to create a perfect-looking spot for a pike to hide under. "I cast that spot a dozen times," he told me later. After he had abandoned it, I cast alongside, performing an almost perfect retrieve. I felt as if I knew just how to tease the pike I felt sure was there. By giving the plug slow, loose jerks. A 20-incher grabbed it and got hooked a second. I knew immediately that my loose retrieve had a flaw when it came to getting the hooks well-set, but it was just right to get the fish to come out.

I tried again three or four times. But the hooks had grabbed for a second. That pike wasn't coming back.

 Oliver's Pike on white spinnerbait

Water on the floodplain


Big Bass