Litton's Fishing Lines: Prepare Your Lure Collection

Thursday, May 9, 2024

Prepare Your Lure Collection

Brenden selected this day months in advance, not only because it's the same Tuesday we caught 46 fish at Tilcon last year, but because it's the day of the New Moon. I didn't expect us to beat last year's number, let alone get close to that figure, as I tend to judge a coming situation conservatively. But we caught 61 fish in little over six hours, most of them largemouths, although we caught just about every species in the lake, besides smallmouth bass and rock bass. I even caught a nine-inch pumpkinseed as well as a couple of big bluegills. Whether or not other sunfish species exist there, I don't know.

Once again, Brenden was taken aback by the average size of the bass we caught, over two pounds. Even so, unlike last year, we caught none over three pounds. I caught the biggest we weighed. Two pounds, 13 ounces, 18 1/4 inches long. It took a little Z-Man Swim Slimz plastic on a 16th-ounce jig. But Brenden caught some pickerel over 20 inches long, including a 26-inch fish that weighed four pounds on the nose. It erupted upon a Zara Spook Junior steadily "walking" calm surface. The last fish of the evening just after sunset. We caught four or five black crappies, including my 15-incher also caught on a Z-Man Slim Swimz. Three or four yellow perch would have measured about 13 inches. One of them hit a trolled Phoebe spoon, but the only landlocked salmon we caught, mine, exploded on a Yo Zuri jerkbait the moment it hit the water. That fish measured 19 1/2 inches long and weighed two pounds, five ounces.

Initial Action and Good News

I had action moments after we pushed off and began casting at the launch. A salmon made a pass at my Z-Man Slim Swimz when I was just about to lift it for the next cast. I also got hit by something, before we turned and began making our way along the bank towards the other side. There a few other salmon did the same thing. And Brenden had caught a bass and me a pickerel, when the guy we had noticed in the distance on a kayak pedaled his way very quickly towards us, looking like Tarzan. No shirt on and wearing shorts.

"Here comes the Harbinger of News," I said to Brenden, though I felt altogether neutral about receiving any.

The guy surprised me, because he was absolutely true to my statement, saying, "I've got to go to work. There's bait balled up over there with bass on them. I used this." (He pointed to a large swim bait on one of his rods.)

"I was just talking to somebody about big swimbaits," Brenden said. (He and Cronk had discussed them.)

"I got four bass. Four to four-and-a-half," the guy said. (I notice people tend to overestimate bass weight, but who knows, it was a big lure he had on that rod.) "Over there where you saw me, between those two trees."

"Right beyond that first cove?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Thanks for telling us," Brenden said.

The guy turned his kayak towards the launch site and pedaled in. I felt slightly flabbergasted, and certainly didn't ignore the guy's sincerity, even though I doubted the bait ball would still be there. Brenden and I decided to fish no further than the corner, so we clocked the squareback over at full speed, soon seeing herring dimple the surface, a couple of fish breaking on them.

Herring Bait Balls

I wasn't fully convinced those were largemouths. I've seen salmon bust herring, though always out over deep water. The graph informed me we were in about seven feet, but in any case, I put a Phoebe where something had just broken the surface and got hit by a small largemouth about a foot long. Brenden caught one on a jerkbait, which prompted me to throw my favorite chrome Yo Zuri, and in no time we were tied at five fish apiece.

Then Brenden began gaining a long lead over me. I could not keep up, and I began to think the Bogos clear-bodied jerkbait with some purple tinge advantaged him. He got hit on almost every cast. Soon he was ten fish ahead.

Rethinking Lure Collection

That forced me to radically rethink my attitude towards lures. I had felt proud--for years now--of my jerkbait collection, but suddenly, it didn't seem so large. It's not just the absence of a clear-bodied Bogos, but that besides my chrome Yo Zuri floater, I have only one other Yo Zuri, which sinks slowly, with anything like chrome finish. I don't have smaller versions that would have more closely matched the size of the little herring in Tilcon, I had forgotten all about my sinking Rapalas in chrome, and found another chrome jerkbait in my study after I came home, about the same two-and-a-half inch size as those Rapalas. None of those little plugs would have cast but half the distance as did my Yo Zuri, but the point is that I should be prepared to try different lures out, rather than forgetting what I have. A lure collection should be organized in the brain as well as in the trays.

Brenden later said it himself, in some other context, "Scout's motto, 'Be Prepared." Absolutely. It's all too easy not to be. The guy who does his thinking--and buying--in a way that prepares outings for better results is better at the operation of fishing. I enjoy pairing off with Brenden, because I think he catches more and bigger fish than anyone I know. We did some trout fishing together in April, and he catches fish steelhead style with the float and Berkley Worm. Microlight salmon egg method is tough to beat, though, but Brenden's had 30-trout days on different occasions. I hope to draw comparison next year, too. My brother Rick is fishing the Pohatcong Saturday, but I told him to bring his fly rod, and he concurred. It's May and the bugs are thick.

Something Didn't Work

I feel pleased that Senko-type worms never resulted in any catches Tuesday. And Brenden threw them repeatedly, which I did just a little. I judged that the whole pace of the outing was up-tempo. I was able to slow down enough to fish a Slim Swimz, but that usually involved a moderate retrieve. It made me feel vanquished that the whole endeavor was not without rhyme or reason--in a sharply defined way--that at least something didn't work. And that something, on other occasions, is usually most effective--besides traditional plastic worms I fish even slower.

The Size of Largemouths

That herring bait ball was more and less one or two conglomerations of thousands of individual herring, and a breeze allowed us to position the boat ahead of them, get carried by, and then float further to the edge of the shallow flat, where we clocked the squareback back to the head of the action again. Tilcon is very clear, and underneath the boat, six or seven feet deep, we saw largemouths as big as 18 or 19 inches scurry along the bottom. Brenden hooked one bigger, which he estimated at four or five pounds. I saw the bathtub-size boil it made on the surface. Many years ago, someone told me about seven-and-a-half pound largemouths in the lake, but I'm skeptical of the existence of more than a relative few. By comparison, I've caught three largemouths on Clinton Reservoir, having fished there a handful of times. One was 20 inches, another 18. And the third was 21 inches. It's a smallmouth lake, but the largemouths are very big. Tilcon is loaded with 16- and 17-inchers, and over the course of the past decade and some, the largest I've seen caught was 19 and 15/16ths inches long, weighing under four pounds.

Even so, 46- and 61-fish days are very far from being the rule here. And it wasn't only the fish on the herring that responded to our various presentations. We caught plenty in the back of the lake, too. But Tilcon fishes slowly all summer and into September. I've never fished the lake in October, and in late November, my son and I had a few pickerel on we didn't actually catch.

I snapped a relative few photos, compared to all we caught; many of them you can see below. Brenden finished with a total of 40, me 21. I asked him if he's interested in fishing tournaments. Impossible to do with work, though.