Picking Away at the Bass

I had to make a hundred burgers and fill the supermarket specialty case with various other items yesterday, on top of the normal busyness of a Saturday. I felt quite satisfied when my shift finished, and I came home, put the marine battery in the trunk with the help of my wife, loaded the rods, the sonar, and the GoPro, all other equipment loaded the night before, and went to bed. (I'm no longer keeping the 70-pound battery upstairs, and I'm not lifting it altogether, not without 50% help, but I'm still lifting the canoe along with my fishing partner. I'm not giving up.) 

Up at 4:18, I dressed, poured orange juice, ate a banana and peanuts, drove to Dover where I met Oliver Shapiro at 5:13. We packed his gear in my Honda Civic, loaded the canoe on top, and drove to Oxford Furnace Lake. Not a scratch on the car, but I do need to buy rope rather than continue to use the cord that broke on the return ride. (I pulled over and retied.) I use a heavy-duty ratchet to secure that canoe in the middle, but the front end sort of bounces, caught by the wind, unless tied down. 

We got on the water while plenty of shadow remained, throwing topwaters. I caught a little largemouth about six inches long. Oliver switched-out and caught the first sizeable bass on a plastic worm weighted by a slip sinker. The canoe was situated over about 12 or 14 feet of water. None of the weedlines at Furnace seem well-defined. The water isn't off-color, but not very clear. We were more or less at the edge of weeds, though, and as we began making our way down along the east side of the lake, I caught a smallish bass of about 11 inches by working the weeds with a unweighted worm rigged on an inset hook. 

Oliver made a point of the slip sinker getting the worm down through the weeds, and I agreed a slip sinker will do that. I thought especially of tungsten. I like to fish very slow, though. Weightless, a worm will get caught on weeds one with a sinker won't, but you can usually shake an unweighted worm free and let it drop a foot or two further along. Not always. But in any case, using weight or not is just a matter of preference. I threw a little paddletail jig outside the thick of the weeds, too, but nothing happened. Back at Lake Aeroflex in June, the well-defined weedline and clear water meant putting the little jig on bottom 20 feet down at that bottom edge of the weeds worked wonders. Today I was committed to my favorite way of bass fishing.

"You pick away at the bass," I said. I felt five of them a likely way to end the morning. No lie, but I kind of wish I said so, although that might have jinxed the eventuality. 

I lost a nice one by putting a worm in front of a floating clump of weeds. Even though I set the hook quickly, it was down in the thick already, and as I tried to force it free, it got off the hook. Maybe five minutes later, I caught another one from a clump, which I photographed in my hand. Later, I caught another about the same size from another clump. The two-pounder photographed came from an anomalous spot. There the shoreline is barren and kind of deep--no weeds filling out the water--for maybe 20 yards. Everywhere else, the weeds make a mess of things, but by being patient with them, having long practice at worming, and especially by putting a worm right next to clumps, you can fill out a catch.     

 

Clinton Reservoir