Catch of the Day - My Dad

Acky, my father and I took to the pond today with Acky and me in the Game Changer and my Pops in the canoe. A very slow day with my father catching just one pickerel. Would have been the only thing we hauled into the boat until my father broke the cardinal sin of canoeing. Let's just say his attempt to stand and adjust his seating to make himself more comfortable backfired. Acky and I were grateful that he would go so far out of his way to try to make a bad fishing day memorable.

Catch and Release - A Primer for the Uninitiated

Two years ago, two guys went by me in a canoe while I was fishing. "Any luck?" they asked. I responded negative. The guy in the back of the canoe got to do what he was hoping to do from the outset, holding up a pretty two to three pounder that he had apparently decided to keep for himself. I was mad. Not because I was part of some jerk's ploy to show off his fish. My fishing inferiority was no more a secret to me then as it is now. I was mad because killing that particular fish - a large mouth bass on a fresh water lake - was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I couldn't help but wonder - why didn't he think so?

Now that fishing season's finally here, I end up steering conversations toward it at some point during social gatherings. That leads almost invariably to the question, "do you keep the fish?" It's quite clear from the quality of the people asking the question that there's just a knowledge gap at work here. Sort of like buying puppies from a pet shop. Seems perfectly reasonable - until you start to understand the many splendors of industrial dog mass production.

First, a disclaimer. I eat fish. I have eaten fish that I caught. Striped bass. Tuna. Some big cold water that I've reeled in on charters like haddock and cod and all that too. I've eaten dolphin fish, which isn't really a dolphin at all but shares the name of a mammal, making it seem more wrong to eat.* So I'm not coming at this from a holier than thou, fish are people too angle. Instead, I'd like to explain why killing a large mouth is a bad idea.

Large mouth bass are hard to catch. In most cases, they need to be tricked into striking and they rarely strike anything that isn't placed within 16" of their noses. That means large mouth bass fishermen need to understand where they are likely to be based on any number of factors like weather, water temp, season, water turbidity, etc. Once a fisherman is able or lucky enough to zero in on the most likely locations, the fisherman but match the conditions to a lure that is likely to evoke a strike. The types of lures at the fisherman's disposal number into the thousands and each must be matched with a particular presentation in order to culminate in the strike. Land too close, you spook the fish. Too far away, the fish won't leave the comfort of its hiding spot. Too slow, you're ignored. Too fast, you're avoided. Do you bump off a log to wake the fish up? Can you pull it off without getting hooked on that log? You get the picture.

That, really, is the sport and attraction of fishing this particular fish. It's about learning what works through trial, error, and study. And as with anything that requires practice, the payoff is in proving you can do it and in experiencing success after investing the effort.

So why the hell would someone eat the prize? That's like popping a basketball after dunking it. It's downright stupid for a number of reasons. Bass have favorite hiding spots they return to again and again. Last year my father took the same 2+ pounder from the same spot two days straight. On both days, it was the highlight catch and we still joke about how he threw his line on top of mine to hook that same fish on the second day. You decide to eat that fish and you've just decreased the number of fish you could possibly catch by one. If you own the lake and no one else fishes it, and the eco system is such that you're not making a dent - no big deal. But if everyone decides to be like the asshole in the canoe, killing fish so they can show them off to strangers, it quickly leads to over fished lakes.

Plus any given 5 pounder is usually at least 8 years old. After 8 years, there's a good chance that fish has seen some things, including being hooked more than a couple times. Who knows how many other people have great memories of catching that fish. Seems a bit selfish, if not inappropriate, to end that journey because you feel like it.

If it's about eating it, I guess I'd have to ask why not just swing by Shaw's and pick up haddock or some other ocean eating fish? Not only will it taste better, but you'll be eating less mercury. According to the MA Game and Wildlife reports, the fish in almost every MA & NH lake should be avoided (at least by children and the elderly) because we've been burning coal, driving cars, and mining asbestos for too many decades to keep relatively still water mercury free.

So now you know. Please don't be the asshole in the canoe.

*If fish had any say over their own evolution they would be wise to develop the ability to scream. Tugging on the emotional capacity of humans is probably the most effective defense against the world's greatest predators. Just ask dogs, cats, eagles, dolphins, whales, and so many others. Except piglets. They're just too delicious.

Five 2+ pounders in less than 3 hours

Today was the hottest April 7th in Massachusetts history. 91 degrees at 2 pm must have done something to accelerate the pre-spawn gorging. This following the rainiest March in history* leading to mosquitoes hatching weeks early. My best guess is that mosquitoes aren't the only animals shifting into gear ahead of their normal routine. How else do you explain 5, 2+ pounders (10 fish total) in less than 3 hours?

Seeing this fluke day coming up in the forecast, Acky and I made some arrangements and were in the Game Changer and on the pond by 4. By 7pm we left the pond with the following catches and in this order: 3 lbs 5 oz (me), 3 lbs 3 oz (Acky), 2 lbs 11 oz (me), 2 lbs 7 oz (me), 3 lbs 7 oz (Acky). In between were a few pickerel and a couple perch. Pretty much non-stop action and all on 5" green senkos cast right against shore. To put this in perspective, I only documented 2+ pounders last year and I probably logged 11. That's from everyone I fished with on the NH lake and on local ponds - 20+ trips easy. My largest fish last year was 3 lbs 15 oz. Two weeks ago I saw my father pull in a 5 lb 14 ouncer and today it was a bass parade. And this is all from 1 small local pond and all caught with senks.

Of course I know this was just 'one of those days' and I realize that using the same damn pattern isn't exactly the road to respectable bass mastery but you can't knock the numbers. I'll be quick to switch to alternatives when old faithful isn't working but if it ain't broke... The trolling motor and putting the worms within 2 foot of shore made a big difference too. Until today I had been fishing in an anchored canoe and mostly helping to keep Mia from tangling or hooking herself. We were able to cover more ground, we retrieved bad casts right away, placed our bait right on spots, and crawled the worm back to life for the first few feet and then quick retrieved.

I'm also starting to believe we've tapped into an under-fished gold mine with this local spot.

This weekend - up to the big lake in NH. It will be colder (50s forecast) and we'll be out on bigger water. Will the streak continue? Will it pay to switch to the football head jig to bounce around the rocky bottom? Have NH bass moved into the flats as quickly? The good news is, possible failure this weekend will be easily forgotten among the dozens of other slow fishing days that have previously been the norm for me. Those all too common slow days are usually passed with stories that start with "it was record-breaking hot and me and Acky cut out of work early to get a little fishing in..."

*That's a lot of "in history" weather. If Acky's republican friends hadn't told me otherwise, I'd think there was something to this global warming thing.

Learning to work with the bait caster (and catching nothing in the process)

Spent 3 hours on the water on the small pond where my father caught the 5lb 14 oz whale on the last nice weekend. Lots of action with bait fish boiling all along the southern edge but couldn't get a thing going. Tried swim baits, 5" senkos, the bitsy jig with a super chunk (frog legs), bitsy jig with a prosenko hanging off the back, and a rattling crank bait. On the last cast pulled in a 9" perch which still puts me squarely in the category of getting skunked.

I did however get a chance to practice with the bait caster. After several horrible birds nests and too much time spent trying to untangle them, I think I have it figured out. Sort of. First, it's important to balance the reel for anything you're about to throw. I learned that from the youtube videos and it's spot on. You know you're balanced when you pull down on the hammer to free the spool and the lure doesn't just drop to the water. Instead it should slide down slowly once you start shaking it back and forth a bit. The guy at Dick's told me this could be achieved with the 1 to 10 magnet dial on the left side of the reel and that the small knob on the other side has to do with tension also but that I'd never need to touch it. He was wrong. That thing seems to me to be the heavy tension adjustment and the 1 - 10 magnet is more for fine tuning.

Second, it's important to not mess around with very light tackle. You need something with a little girth to pull the line off the spool.

Third, I was more successful throwing straight over the top. What I mean by that is that my throwing motion with a spinner is all over the place. I'll side arm it, skip it, throw it over the top, etc based on my target, the cover, how close I am to hooking the other person in the boat, etc. With the bait caster if you throw side arm and you apply pressure with your thumb to the spool you watch the lure begin to arc further in whatever direction your motion was headed. I'm not suggesting that you can't skip a bait caster. Just that I can't. Yet.

Finally, I found that I had to release it much sooner than the spinner to get the distance I want. Otherwise the thing nose dives and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Birds nest. To make that work I found that a real whip snap motion got me maximum distance. I was fishing a hula popper at dusk while trying to figure all this out and getting pretty good distance from it. Two fish sort of rolled at it, making me think more trout than bass, but I'm not sure trout would be in this little pond.

So, to summarize: use a lure with heft, balance the reel first, over the head throw, release high with a whip snap motion, I caught no real fish.

Jackall Flip Shake (aka., a tweaked out senko)

So this is an interesting idea. I've been taught to mix up the presentation of a senko worm by switching from a Texas rig to a "wacky" rig, where you basically put the hook in the middle of the worm to get better action on the roll (drop...i think). Looks like these guys are attempting to capitalize on that with a 5.8" work designed to give better action on the roll and rigged with a jig head to make it drop faster.

On a related note, a great site for discovering who's using what in tournaments and tracking new ideas / product releases is BassFan.com.

http://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Jackall_Flick_Shake_Worm/descpage-JFS.html?from=bassfan#