Litton's Fishing Lines: 46-Fish Afternoon Evening

Brenden Kuprel catches fish. Earlier this week, he's told me of his double digit catches of bass and pickerel from his kayak at Davidson's Mills. He nailed 20 largemouths near Chimney Rock the week before. The litany trails on back further than I can tell you. He more than doubled my catch yesterday, and I've fished the lake for years. I believe it was his second time there.

Together we caught 46 fish. Brenden: 14 largemouths, 10 pickerel, 3 crappie, 4 bluegills. Me: 10 largemouths, 3 pickerel, 1 bluegill, 1 landlocked salmon.

The size of the largemouths was outstanding. Brenden's longest is photographed above, 19 7/8 inches. He caught an 18 1/2 incher that weighed more. Others were near 18 inches, most of them about 2 1/2 pounds. Only a couple of them were a foot long and a little shorter. One of my bass was 13 or 14 inches, all the others over 16 1/2 or so, one of them a little over 18, I estimate, and a couple of others close to 18 inches.

The pickerel not so big. Brenden got the biggest at about 20 inches.

Brenden also got a bull bluegill and one of his crappies was nice.

We began by fishing along a shoreline that had only produced for me in the past near the launch. I was about to motor us further down lake a couple hundred yards, when Brenden hooked his second pickerel. Then I knew better than to leave that shoreline, and soon, we each had a bass on at the same time. Multiple times that happened over that afternoon and evening.

And he caught so many pickerel, I was left wondering in a kind of subdued awe about the fact that on the way there--Brenden my passenger--I almost told him the lake is loaded with them.

"Why would I say that?" I had asked myself. "It has pickerel, but we've never caught all that many."

Because it's true? Sometimes a truth "arrives" in the mind of it's own volition--regardless of collected evidence. It's wise to wait on such a truth until you know that's what it is. Not a delusion.

Brenden used a little swimbait, an ultralight finesse, soft plastic jig that the pickerel simply rose out of the weeds to pounce on. They're there. We sure learned that yesterday. But usually they ignore presentations intended for bass. I did hook and lose a nice one on an eight-inch traditional worm, and Brenden caught one on a Senko, if I remember rightly. But you watch the little swimbait in the water, the paddletail giving it lifelike motion, and you see why you can retrieve it three or four feet down in 10 feet of weedy water and pickerel will swim right up and behind, nailing it. In green, it looks like a vulnerable little bass.

It took me maybe four hours before I accepted Brenden's invitation to use one. I caught two pickerel and a nice largemouth nearly 18 inches long on it. I felt I would have fished it better on one of the ultralights left at home. I used a medium power 5 1/2-foot St. Croix instead.

Brenden said the fish haven't seen lures in a long time, since the season is just getting underway. "That's a good point," I said, "The fish have been virginized." The water ranged from 65 to 67 degrees, so there wasn't any hesitation on the fish's part due to cool temps, either. We wore T-shirts in 70-degree sunshine.

We continued along that shoreline. After we arrived where I've caught bass many times, I looked back on the long course we had taken and I felt satisfied. I'm using a Minn-Kota Endura Max, 42-inch shaft, and the variable speed is easier to manage than my old five-speed. It's just like a gas outboard. You use the handle as a throttle. It's lowest speed is a lot slower than the lowest of the five-speed, and that's very advantageous on calm water.

Speaking of which, don't miss my article "Bass Out of the Wind," coming soon in one of The Fisherman weeklies. Brenden noticed the same. "We've been catching all the fish out of the wind," he said. Most of the bass we caught seemed spawned out, but even during the post-spawn, females like calm surroundings. I make the point in the article that bass will not spawn where a bed will be run over by three-foot chop. No chop that big existed here, but the principle is the same.

I did catch a bass in the middle of the lake over 35 feet of water. On a Phoebe trolled a couple of feet down. We had seen fish repeatedly break water in the chop. After herring. Naturally, I believed I had hooked a salmon. After I released the bass, Brenden said, "Catching a salmon wouldn't be that easy."

But it was. On the way back to the launch, I had no doubt what I had hooked on that quarter-ounce Phoebe was a salmon. It was two or three times faster than any bass, running off to the left, then to the right. Proved to be a 16 1/2-inch fish. I should have thought to offer Brenden one of my eighth-ounce Phoebes to try, but it slipped my mind.

We mixed it up. Used many different types and specific lures. I believe another salmon had hit my Chatterbait, given the way the the lure felt whalloped twice before the fish was gone. It felt like neither bass nor pickerel and hit over 18 feet of water. We fished a shallow flat when I cast out beyond the drop-off. Brenden caught bass on spinnerbaits, the bull bluegill on same, and I missed a couple of other hits on the Chatterbait. I caught largemouths on both the traditional worm fished weightless and a Senko; Brenden did well on the latter, too. The faster-sinking Senko advantages the fishing this time of year, because weeds are not nearly as thick as they will be when a long worm on an inset hook might do better. The lake's shoreline drops off immediately into 10 and 15 feet of water and more, so a worm that gets down in the newly emerging weeds faster means more range is at your disposal.

I treasure finally catching a salmon. And yet, for me the outing's highlight was hooking an immense largemouth I estimate at 22 inches. I threw a Senko beyond a shallow flat at the drop, using a seven-foot, medium-heavy Lew's Speed Stick. I set the hook and all hell broke loose. I had no doubt I had hooked a significantly larger bass than any of the others. And one of the bass I lost broke my 20-pound test fluorocarbon leader. Yes, at the knot, but the knot hadn't gone all that bad. I found myself suddenly in the compromised position of my rod tip pointing at a big fish that had suddenly changed direction on slackened line while moving at top speed. So the line popped. But I could tell I had hooked a bigger one.

It suddenly went airborne, throwing the hook, and the size of the gaping jaws I just can't forget.