There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.

Racoon leaving after exploring my tackle bag

I haven’t been blogging about it (sorry), but I have been fishing a fair bit this summer.  Not as much as I have in the past–life just gets busier and busier, it seems–but I’m trying to get away for a little while at least once a week or so.

This year the fishing hasn’t been great in the lake I usually fish, but I’ve been out about three times this summer to a large private pond owned by a good friend, and have caught a lot of nice bass there.

But a couple of weeks ago I was fishing at the public lake, late in the evening, and I carried my tackle bag (a nice one I got from Bass Pro Shops some years ago) with me to the shore line and set it on a rock.  (Often I just leave the bag in the car and take a pack of plastic worms in my pocket.)  I caught two or three little bass, but I couldn’t help noticing the guy up the shore to my left–he was catching three times the number of fish I was–little ones, probably crappie (I was too far away to see).  Anyway, as a result, when it came time for me to leave, I turned to my left and began climbing up the short hill to my car.  Had I turned to my right, I’d have seen my tackle bag sitting there, but I didn’t, and I absentmindedly left it and drove off.  It didn’t even register with me that it wasn’t in the car when I put my rod away.

I had the opportunity to go back out the next morning, and when opened my car’s hatch and reached for my pole, I noticed for the first time that the bag was not there.  I figured out pretty quickly what had happened, but alas, the bag had disappeared from the rock where I had left it and was no where to be found.  I was sad, but perhaps more than that, I felt pretty stupid right about then.  While I normally have a copy of my fishing license in the little plastic window on the top of the bag, this year that didn’t get done, for whatever reason, so there was no way for the finder of my bag to find me.

I didn’t have an extensive collection of lures, really–but I figure there was close to $200 worth of stuff there, including a really nice little fly case that I bought when I was in junior high, more than 40 years ago–I reckon that makes it an antique–it was a nice metal case with tiny little metal clips inside to hold the flies.  I’m probably saddest about losing that.

I had a birthday coming up, and my family members gave me gift certificates for more fishing tackle, so now I’m starting over.  I’ve got a brand-new tackle box and a few of the essential things–hooks and weights, floats and other odds and ends.  In a way, it’s fun to replace stuff, especially in cases where I didn’t really like what I had before, but couldn’t justify replacing it.

I genuinely hope that whoever found my bag has the opportunity to use that stuff well and often.

I hope you’re having a good summer.

Happy fishing!

I’ve been out several times over the last few weeks, and really didn’t have much luck–in fact, I’ve been skunked repeatedly.  I suspected that perhaps it was because I ran out of my favorite plastic worms–the five-inch Malopo-infused Wave Worms, in the red shad color.  I was having a hard time finding them locally, and although I could have dropped in at Cabela’s or Bass Pro Shops on one of my recent excursions to Kansas City, I knew that I’d pay a premium price there, and I’m nothing if not a cheap so-and-so.

So I bought a different brand of worms–some kind of silly flip-tail thing, a lot skinnier than my Wave Worms, and thought I’d give them a try.  I caught one or two fish in several tries, but I wasn’t impressed at all with these worms–they were just too skinny, too light, and not stinky enough, I think.

My wife gave me a Walmart gift card for my birthday, specifically for fishing stuff, and as luck would have it, they had my worms.  And wouldn’t you know it–the next two times out, I caught two fish each time on those great worms, and had more strikes than I’ve had in a long time.

(Just for the record, this is an unpaid endorsement   Hope you’re having a great summer, and wetting some line now and then!

Biggest one yet this season

Tonight is probably the last night of relatively temperate weather we’re going to have for a while–the weather folks are saying that a big heat wave is going to get underway tomorrow–so I decided to have a go at the lake while it’s still relatively cool.  It paid off when I caught this big fellow.  I didn’t get him weighed, but I’m guessing he was well over three pounds.  I photographed him with my phone camera alongside my foot, so there’d be a size reference (I wear a size 10-1/2 sneaker).

It took me a while to land this one–he was pulling so hard, I thought there was a good chance he might snap my line, and as it turned out, I got lucky.  A few casts later I hooked another good size one on the same rig–maybe a two-and-a-half or three-pounder, and as I was getting him close to the shore, he took off with my hook, sinker and worm.  When I inspected the end of my line, it was obvious that the knot had come untied.

Happy fishing!

Anyway, I decided to return to the spot where I caught the last two a couple of days ago, a stretch of grassy bank between the old marina and the swimming dock.  The actual spot where I caught my last fish didn’t produce anything this morning, so I headed a little farther north, to a place where there is a sandy bank, almost like a little boat ramp area–I’ve seen paddlers launch canoes and kayaks there before–a guy jumped in the lake off the swimming dock and began doing laps across the middle of the lake, just across from where I was fishing, and he did a lot of laps.  I’m guessing he was training for an upcoming triathalon in our area, because when he was done swimming, he unhitched his bike from his car and started off around the lake.  I don’t know if there is a connection in this, but as soon as he started swimming, I started getting strikes.

Within about 20 minutes, with the guy doing laps 40 or 50 yards from me, I caught four bass–three that ran about two pounds each, and one smaller one.  When he stopped swimming, I didn’t get any more strikes.  It could just be a coincidence–the sun was getting higher and higher, of course–but I couldn’t help but wonder if his swimming was stirring up the food supply or something.

I had been casting into the grass at the shoreline, but when I got to the sandy bank, I just decided to drop a few casts out across the sandy bottom, and that’s where I caught all four of them.  Seems strange to me–I’ve always heard that bass like cover, but these guys were apparently patroling the sandy bottom.

A great morning of fishing–hope you’re getting some of the same!

Caught on 6/25/2009

Maybe I’ve just been fishing in the wrong spots.  My last half-dozen times out I’ve been skunked more often than not.  This morning, after trying in vain in a favorite spot (that really hasn’t been producing of late), I took a bit of a walk up the bank, past a place where water from recent rains had cut a small channel in the bank.  In the past, I’ve found fish hanging around those places where water was running into the lake from the woods, so I thought I’d give it a try.  Nothing doing today.  But a little further up the shoreline there were some places that were freshly-mowed and afforded fairly decent access, so I started making short casts just beyond the grass, and within ten minutes I’d landed a couple of bass–the first one was about a pound and a quarter, and then I caught the one pictured at right, which I’m guessing weighed somewhere between two and three pounds.

Typical Kansas summer squall, viewed from my church parking lot, 6/24/2009

It’s been unbelievably hot and humid here lately–the heat index has been up around 110 the last two days–but yesterday we had a fairly impressive summer squall that blew up suddenly in the early evening and cooled things off for a couple of hours.  We’ve had so much rain over the past few weeks that the lake has been stained and murky almost non-stop for a long time.  That might help explain why I haven’t caught too many fish lately.  Yeah…that’s what we’ll say–it was the weather.

Good luck, fellow anglers–I hope you’re getting some time to fish!

I pretty little bass I caught one evening earlier this week

It’s been so nice the past few days around here, with high temperatures in the 80′s and sunshine all day–the water temperature at the local lakes is coming up to the point that the bass are active now.  I’m seeing more and more surface activity, and although I’m not exactly tearing it up–I’ve only caught three fish so far this spring–I’m getting more strikes, and having a great time.  Hope you’re getting out, too.

What a nice evening it was!

This past Tuesday, we had a break in the weather–it was sunny and warm and beautiful all day long, and after work, I decided I would head out to the lake for a couple of hours.  I didn’t think there was a good chance of catching a fish, because we’d had rain for several days before then, and I figured the water would be murky and stained.  My route to the small lake I’ve been fishing most often takes me across the dam of a larger reservoir, and that evening I counted no fewer than 30 cars parked along the road at the south end of the dam, a favorite fishing spot.  There were guys fishing along the dam, spaced about 10 yards apart for practically the entire length of the dam, it seemed.  That’s a good sign.

“My” lake was crowded, too–all of my usual fishing spots were occupied, so I had to drive halfway around the lake, almost to the stop sign where the road turns to gravel.  There was a place at the bottom of a steep bank that looked accessible and not terribly overgrown, so I parked and headed down the bank.  The only reason the bank at the water’s edge wasn’t muddy was that it was strewn with woody debris that had washed out of the woods during the torrential rains we had had a few days earlier.

Fish were boiling up and jumping not far from shore–that was new.  Every other time I’d fished that lake this year, there was no top-water presence of fish that I could detect.  Again, a good sign.

I worked about 30 yards of shoreline, and the water in that finger of the lake was pretty shallow toward the middle, but a little deeper closer to the shore.  On a cast along the bank, I actually had a fish on the line for a few seconds, but he got loose before I could set the hook.  A few casts later, I felt a very light tap (seems typical for this time of year), and when he began to run, I set the hook and began hauling him in.  He put up a fight, and I was impressed when I finally landed him–I tried to weigh him, but the scale didn’t cooperate.  I did get him measured, though, and he was every bit of 18 inches long, which, in my book, is a good-sized bass.

It’s always great to catch that first one of the season.  Good luck to you, too!

I gave it my best shot, but no luck today–not even a nibble.  I suspect most of the fish are in deeper, warmer water, and I tried to cast as far and as deep as I could, but if the truth be told, I wasn’t really expecting to catch anything today.  That’s almost never a problem for me–I just enjoy being outdoors and standing on the bank, taking in the fresh air, listening to the wildlife all around (and today there were large flocks of geese on the water and in the air, honking up a storm).

My spinning reel was a bit noisy, though–which reminded me that I haven’t done any winter maintenance on my gear, so that goes on the to-do list.  I usually like to take my reels apart and clean out the grit and lubricate the gears (I typically use a little Vaseline for this), and load them up with fresh line before I head out for the first time.

This year there will be a new twist in my fishing outings:  my favorite local fishing lake, Douglas County State Fishing Lake, has been closed for several years for maintenance–they drained it and worked on the dam and set out some brush piles to improve fish habitat–and as of the first of the year, it’s open again for fishing.  I haven’t fished it yet, but I will.  I’ve heard that you need to give a new lake a few years to develop before the fishing gets good again, but this lake has been closed to fishing for a pretty long time since they began filling it up again, so I’m optimistic that it will produce some nice bass fishing by summer time.

Here’s hoping that you get out sometime soon, too!