I have written several gardening blogs lately, so maybe it is time for one on fishing…bass fishing. Adolescent bass are dumber than a box of rocks and easy to catch. Once bass reach legal size (14 inches in most Indiana lakes) they suddenly wise up and become very difficult to catch. I am thinking of one particular lake my brother and I frequent (although I have seen the same phenomenon at other lakes); we caught so many 13”and 13 ½” bass the first year that I was sure that if we went back the next summer they would all have grown to legal size and we would have a heyday. No such luck. After fishing the same reservoir for three summers, catching hundreds (dare I say a thousand) undersize bass, I have only caught ONE legal bass and it was just barely 14 inches. We had a lot of fun but you can understand why I became a fan of crappie which are all legal and became the basis of our meals.
One solution to this problem was to find a “slot lake” in our area. At the particular slot lake we fished, all bass were legal except those in the 13”-15” slot which had to be released. We caught our usual 50 bass between the two of us and had to throw quite a few back because they were a little over 13 inches. (It felt strange to measure fish and then throw them back because they were too big after all those I’d had to throw back because they were a tad small in the past.) Anyway, my brother and I both quickly filled our 5 bass daily limits with 12”to almost 13” bass along with several crappie. My brother is a wall mount fisherman who gets his adrenaline fix from fighting and landing bass over 5 pounds, so when we got home he gave me his share of the catch to get out of cleaning them. I had 24 filets, enough for six meals for my wife and I. I also felt this outcome could be repeated almost anytime we fished a slot lake. Had we gone to most lakes and caught the same fish, we could only have brought home a couple crappie.
Of course Jim has a different solution to this problem and that is to find a way to get larger bass to bite. I think he may be near a breakthrough. When Jim goes fishing he also goes lure hunting for what other casters have left in shoreline trees. He is as passionate about this pursuit as he is about fishing. One particular lure which we found in the bushes was an X-Rap® a new rapella lure that proved so effective against these dumb adolescent /not quite legal bass when fished with an erratic motion that my brother went out and bought about a half dozen more…and Jim doesn’t usually buy lures; he finds them. I liked the X-Rap because it ran fairly shallow-2’to 5’ and could be fished just over underwater weed beds. Because of my medical appointments, Jim has been fishing alone the last couple of weeks. He has bought some deeper running X-Raps which run down to 15’ to fish over deeper weed beds. He has landed a couple bass over 19” and failed to boat a third which he thinks might have gone close to eight pounds. Not bad for daytime fishing in the dog days of summer.
So the bottom line is we are both trying to refine our lure and lake selection and our technique until hopefully one of these days we get it right.
One solution to this problem was to find a “slot lake” in our area. At the particular slot lake we fished, all bass were legal except those in the 13”-15” slot which had to be released. We caught our usual 50 bass between the two of us and had to throw quite a few back because they were a little over 13 inches. (It felt strange to measure fish and then throw them back because they were too big after all those I’d had to throw back because they were a tad small in the past.) Anyway, my brother and I both quickly filled our 5 bass daily limits with 12”to almost 13” bass along with several crappie. My brother is a wall mount fisherman who gets his adrenaline fix from fighting and landing bass over 5 pounds, so when we got home he gave me his share of the catch to get out of cleaning them. I had 24 filets, enough for six meals for my wife and I. I also felt this outcome could be repeated almost anytime we fished a slot lake. Had we gone to most lakes and caught the same fish, we could only have brought home a couple crappie.
Of course Jim has a different solution to this problem and that is to find a way to get larger bass to bite. I think he may be near a breakthrough. When Jim goes fishing he also goes lure hunting for what other casters have left in shoreline trees. He is as passionate about this pursuit as he is about fishing. One particular lure which we found in the bushes was an X-Rap® a new rapella lure that proved so effective against these dumb adolescent /not quite legal bass when fished with an erratic motion that my brother went out and bought about a half dozen more…and Jim doesn’t usually buy lures; he finds them. I liked the X-Rap because it ran fairly shallow-2’to 5’ and could be fished just over underwater weed beds. Because of my medical appointments, Jim has been fishing alone the last couple of weeks. He has bought some deeper running X-Raps which run down to 15’ to fish over deeper weed beds. He has landed a couple bass over 19” and failed to boat a third which he thinks might have gone close to eight pounds. Not bad for daytime fishing in the dog days of summer.
So the bottom line is we are both trying to refine our lure and lake selection and our technique until hopefully one of these days we get it right.
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