Worm Time

Back at the pond, despite a temperature reading of only 57, casting one of two large spinners (willow-leaf inline) I made recently, I noticed quite a few small fish busting surface, though nothing happened like dozens of them spooked by my approach last week. And I couldn't really tell if any were bass. They seemed to be sunfish, but for all I know, they could have been baby carp. There are some big ones in the pond. 

Intentionally, I cut a cast in very close to the bank to my left and got snagged on wood. So I put my rod down and walked around to see if I could free it. As I approached the edge--a big wake. Almost certainly from a bass, not a carp, the fish would have weighed at least two pounds and had been sitting among emerging vegetation in about 10 inches of water. The green leaves of that weed were surprisingly large, a good inch of them already. Surely, the water had warmed a little better under the sun there. 

That bass just sounded off the word "worm." Forget the spinners. It was time to dabble a weedless and unweighted worm right on edges of new weed growth like this one. I took my little tackle box from a pocket and...found that, in my infinite stupidity, I had put no worms in it. I did have an inset hook! I'm making sure worms come along next time.