I haven’t been fishing as much as I’d like to this month.  Fishing in the pond hasn’t been very productive with a few small bass and crappie.  Even the bluegill, which will normally attack a small popper readily have not been cooperating.  The fish seem to be well fed though, judging from the ones that I have caught.  My guess is that they’re doing all their feeding at night.  I don’t fish at night anymore preferring the middle of the day until supper time.  I have managed to catch some nice channel cat with a blue fox spinner and that lure seems to be the only one working in the pond.  On the other hand, maybe I haven’t been patient enough with my fly rod.

However, I have managed to get to River Bend  twice.  My first day out, on a Thursday, was a good day.  I managed to boat 19 fish, a mixture of bass, warmouth and bluegill.  In that mixture were nine bass.  The bluegill and warmouth were caught on the fly rod.  The bass seemed to want only one lure, a “Baby Fat Rap” crank bait.  The only color that worked was shad blue, with a red gill slash, and silver sides.  My other cranks, stick worms, Yum Craw, Zoom worms never got a nip. 

My second trip to river bend, last Thursday, the 27th was just about a good.  The weather forecast was for a 50% chance of scattered thunderstorms in the evening.  The sky was partly cloudy and the temperature was in the mid 80’s.  I took the chance that I would miss the thunderstorms.

I’m glad I went.  Shown is a typical largemouth bass caught in River Bend.  Most of these fish average about 1 1/2 to 2 lbs but they are healthy and put up a mighty struggle for their size.  Of course there are larger bass in the lake but the largest bass that I’ve caught there is less than 3 1/2 lbs and very few of them.  On this day I caught eleven bass, three nice warmouth (about 1/2 lb each) a small bluegill on my fly rod using a small popper from “Discount Flies”  and a channel cat of about 2 lbs.  The cat was caught on my Baby Fat Rap.  And I caught eleven bass almost all the twin of the one shown in the picture.  With the exception of the channel cat, I could have left the Baby Fat Rap crank bait home.  The bass were not interested in the only lure they would hit on my previous trip there.

I changed tactics.  I set up a drop shot rig using a #6  circle hook on 8 lb Suffix fluorocarbon line with a Gary Yammato black/red stick worm.  That got me my first bass of the day.  I was drift fishing with it along a sand bar; just letting the boat slowly drift along the deep edge of the bar in about i5 feet of water.  But it was my only fish for about 45 minutes and three  separate passes along the bar.  I made three more passes along the bar with my Baby Fat Rap, the one I used the previous trip, no takers.  I tried using using a “ Rage “ top water lure, speeding it over the shallow surface of the sand bar and got the attention of two bass that hit the lure but got off without a good hook up.  I decided to change tactics again and now its about 5:00 PM.

I set up the Gary Yammato stick worm, black and Red, weightless and started working the shoreline on my way back to the boat landing.  Several bass chased the worm right up to the boat but wouldn’t take it.  I changed color.  I switched to the green and black stick worm and “Bingo”  I started catching bass.  I landed ten more bass and missed that many with poor hookups.  Most got off right at the boat. 

I really had a  good day after all.  The moral of today’s story is,  go fishing when you can and keep trying until you find the solution.  Of course I thought that the Baby Fat Rap would do it all over again like the last time, but it didn’t.

I got back to the landing at dusk, loaded the boat onto the trailer, got my sensitive equipment, tackle boxes, rods, battery, Min Kota motor, camera, etc., into my van and just when I had finished, “Boom”, the rain started, the lightening flashed and the wind blew fiercely.  I escaped the deluge just in time.

Tight lines

Jim

The day is August 8, 2009 and I’m late adding this memorable day to my web site.  First, my son Stephen is not a dedicated fisherman like his old man but, occasionally, we will go out together just to be together.  This is a blessing, enjoying the outdoors with your son and talking of thing like: do you remember…, what do you think about…, have you heard from…, I’m worried about…, and, among other subjects, “I want to go back to school.”  This is wonderful news to me and my wife of 52 years, Patty.  That brightened up my day and we discussed his future while fishing, to almost no avail, fish wise.  The fish, a couple of small bass and crappie just did not want to cooperate but we didn’t care.  We had a great day just being together.

Stephen has passed all his entrance exams and his former credits were all transferable.  He has entered school again and has already begun his classes.

That was one of the best fishing days of my life.