Bass fishing from the bank is often a puzzle that when put together correctly can produce a beautiful picture. However, when you lay a 1000 piece puzzle in front of a child, frustration is eminent. If you walk toward the lake with a lure already in your mind that you plan to use without first assessing conditions, failure or at least frustration could soon pay you a visit.
I've been reminded of this more than a couple of times when traveling to my wife's parents home in the country. It sounds so swanky when I say it like that, but when I say country...I mean "the sticks". My magic farm pond belongs to their neighbors on 80 acres of rough and tumble. I have to hike 1/2 mile one way through chest high native grass dodging bovine land mines, ankle eating hoof holes, and the occasional slithering surprise to the 300 yard long body of water. My best fishing is generally from the dam which spans the 180 yard width of the quaint little "farm pond". (It's a good size puddle)
It's one of those places that seems predictable until you try to predict it. If the magic pond gets any sense of over confidence from the approaching angler, it will eat you for lunch just for amusement.
For instance, in December of 2014 (winter in the Midwest) I was catching 16 largemouth per hour. In February of this year, I was catching 26 largemouth per hour. Amazing fishing for winter. I was so excited about February, I confidently invited my own Dad a couple of weeks later to fish this massive honey hole. He caught zero, I caught only 2. We were on the back side of a cold front that day and it tore us a new one.
Usually in the winter months there's not much vegetation to foul out my lures so my very best results occur when the sun warms the surface and I employ a slow moving flashy bait that I can keep high in the column. In this case, dressed silver Mepps Aglia #4. When the planets align on this place, there is no better weapon. These bass are extremely optimistic when the surface temp increases a couple degrees, so they become very active.
Spring wreaks havoc by way of weeds. I'm not a botanist, but it seems as if the entire pond has a layer of coontail, milfoil, moss, and whatever else grows there. Usually (I have to whisper this so the pond doesn't hear me) when the weeds bear their pretty faces, I descend on the place loaded with plastics and frogs and annihilate it like a silent sniper at a practice range.
Of course this spring is different. It has to be different, otherwise I wouldn't be writing this account of near defeat. We've had ridiculous amounts of rain, hail, and just general crazy weather recently. It all seemed to start leveling off as nature found her peace so I approached this weekend with a fairly rigid and pointed plan. Annihilate!
The day before we left, the skies opened up on my little town and rained down holy terror in the form of golf ball plus-sized hail. My poor 2001 Dodge Dakota with only 45k original miles lost the title of Super Truck to the new moniker: Dimples. Sad, sad day. It didn't take me long to stop thinking about my beautiful disaster of a truck sitting in Amber Flame dimples, and start wondering what all this weather was going to do to my weekend at the in-laws. Incidentally, it's MY weekend because it's my 40th birthday.
We arrived at the farm and I commenced to assembling my arsenal of rods, reels, tackle bag, rain gear, boots...yada. I woke up early Saturday morning and headed out with (first mistake) my first lure in mind. I hiked a half mile in rain gear because the morning dew was waist-high. At first glance, there wasn't a weed in sight!! I was stoked like Shaun White dropping into a 20 -foot pipe. Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the rain had increased the water level to just barely above the weeds. It was difficult to tell where the weeds even were.
I started the day with the infamous Whopper Plopper. This bait is new to me but looked so intriguing that I couldn't resist. I caught 3 in the first hour because the moss on the weeds kept getting wrapped up in the Whopper Plopper Prop. I guess you'd call it "Whopper Plopper Slopper Propper syndrome". I switched to a Senko in hopes that the soft plastic time of year would get me through it all. The Senko was a total frustration because it would get loaded with moss as I pulled it to me.
There wasn't much weed-mat structure to throw a frog on, so I pulled a hard-stop before frustration set in and thought about the situation. I know these guys are still eating shad and little fish, so I loaded up with wake baits and a Topwater Perch and tried again. I worked the wake baits around sections of weeds, and threw the topwater perch into where I suspected the thicker weeds to be.
I could hear victory trumpets as I started yanking in largemouth after largemouth, over and over. In the next couple hours, I had amassed a total of 43 fish...the highlights being several in the 3.5-5 pound range and a 6 pound Toad.
Thank God I took a minute to reassess the situation because I turned a frustrating day on the banks of a volatile place into a killer time that I'll never ever forget!
Enjoy some of the highlight pictures from my day below. Click for larger image.
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