Things have slowed down just a bit at work, so I was able to hit up the lake with James during lunch. I hadn't taken any gear with me, but James was gracious enough to let me use his spinning rod while he fly fished.
We saw plenty of nice sized bass but didn't hook up on any of them during lunch. I was using a soft plastic wacky-rigged worm but wasn't able to entice a bite.
Actually, my bait was picked up once while my attention was elsewhere. I was using a slow intermittent retreive and was just looking around at some of the other people. When I looked back towards my line I noticed it was pulled straight and moving sideways (never felt a bite). I leaned in just a bit, ready to set the hook. Just as I began to set it my line when completely slack and I hooked a big ol' chunk of nuthin'.
A couple of casts later I felt my line get real heavy all of a sudden. I wasn't going to miss this one. I set the hook and watched as the rod bent way over. "Got him!" But there was no fight. As I started reeling I realized I had just hooked up on some junk in the water. It turns out I had set the hook right under the outer lip of a clear plastic cup and had hauled in nothing but plastic and about 12 oz of water.
So the follow up conversation could go one of two ways:
"Today I fished with plastics."
"Did you catch anything?"
"No. Got skunked."
- or -
"Today I fished for plastics."
"Did you catch anything?"
"Yep. A 12 ouncer!!"
That's it. A single preposition can make the difference between a successfull run and getting skunked.
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It was kind of a weird evening at the lake just now. Today (Saturday) was a really nice day, so I expected a lot of people to be at the lake this evening. Nope. There were a few families there, but nothing like the crowds that are usually there are on the weekends.
The lake is still a mess. Algae is everwhere. You can see it laying on the bottom. Some of it is attached to the bottom and floats up towards the surface. And some of it is detached and has formed large masses that float near the bank all over the place. It looks like fish poop lining the entire outer edge of the lake.
It's pretty gross when you're stripping algae off your dropshot on every retrieval and as you pinch the algae to remove it from the sinker you inadvertantly crush a bunch of tiny little snails that live inside the algae. You're trying to remove this grotesque mass which looks like something that came out of the Hulk's nose during allergy season, and your finding a bunch of little creatures that you can not identify crawling around (and onto your fingers).
This stuff is everywhere and unavoidable for the most part. I try to avoid the floating masses as I'm reeling my bait in to minimize the cleanup effort.
So, I had been there for only about 15 minutes when I feel a bite. I set the hook and the fish starts swimming around with all the direction and purpose of a confused butterfly. He didn't know where he was going. He didn't come up and do any headshakes and he wasn't really swimming hard, just ... swimming. So I was starting to wonder if I had caught something other than a bass, but eventually he came to the surface and I saw it was a bass.
Now I don't know if he was just having an off day, as was the rest of the lake, but as soon as he saw me he basically just gave up. He swam around a little bit but would then just come up the surface and lie there looking at me. I wanted to play him a bit, so I didn't haul him in right away. But he didn't want to play. He just looked at me as if he knew very well what a fisherman was and that I'd be releasing him soon enough. But I wasn't hauling him in right away. So what did he do? Remember those floating masses of algae I mentioned? He decided he'd go along pulling my line through those, collecting as much of it as he could on my line. That got my attention. I didn't want anything to do with that. I grabbed my net and he came to the surface again and just laid there calm as could be while I netted him. No headshakes, no fighting. Just an attitude of "Get this thing out of my lip and put me back in the water so I can go find some REAL food!!!" Unfortunately, I didn't have my phone with me so I couldn't take a picture of him.
I only stayed for about an hour. I was getting tired of the algae real quick. Then all the swarms of mosquitos came out as the sun was setting. It also started to get cold and I didn't have anything warm, so I decided to call it an evening. 1 Fish. That's all I ever ask.
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Went to the lake yesterday during lunch. It was pretty quiet there. Plenty of people walking, but only a couple guys fishing.
The sky was clear and bright but the water was real dirty and hard to see through. I figured I'd need something that could catch the sun light and be visible in all that murk, so I tied on my spinner bait.
I worked my way starting from the restaurants towards the point. When I got to the big trees and saw the shadows they were casting on the water, I figured that would be a good place for a bass to hang out waiting for a meal to pass by.
I cast a couple times and brought the bait back through that shadow but didn't find anything there. However, when I cast my line about 15 feet off the bank above the shadow I did manage to hook up and proceeded to catch my first bass on a spinner bait.
As I was landing him, a woman and her little boy were passing by and I got a chance to show the little boy my 'big fish'. We talked about the fish and what he felt like, then he watched as I let him go. The mom said she had brought him fishing here before, but had not seen any fish this size. Maybe now that they've seen a 'big fish', they'll come back and try again.
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Went to Harveston for about an hour this morning, but didn't catch anything. The water was really clear, but there was mossy algae everwhere. It was coating the bottom which made dropshotting a pain because I'd pull in a big ol' wad of moss with every cast. Eventually I switched to a spinner bait, but I was still pulling in junk with that because it floating everywhere. I'd expect to see that with real cloudy, dirty water. But the water itself was really clear, so it was weird.
The bass were chasing each other all over the place. I'm not sure what had them so worked up, but they were pretty active ... but not hungry apparently. I couldn't get any of them to bite.
There were also a bunch of gold fish. Well, I call them gold fish. I'm not exactly sure what they all are. It looks like someone took fish out of their fish tank at home and threw them in the lake, and they, being faster than most, lived long enough to grow really big. Some look a lot like Koi with the white, orange, and black spots everywhere. Others just look like feeder fish, like those that you get from a carnival, except these are on steroids.
One had long fins and was all white and he just hung out close to the bank the whole time. He wasn't really spooked by me at all and just spent most of his time wandering back and forth checking things out.
You can see a larger picture here
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Headed over to the lake near the office yesterday with James and Chris. James had been there earlier that morning and had landed a bass on a fly, so I was hopeful. The three of us kind of spread ourselves out around the lake, but none of us had any luck. There were others there that were catching fish, but they were all using methods that none of us really want to use. A couple of guys had caught a large catfish while fly-lining live crawfish. Another guy had been bait soaking with hotdog and ended up gut-hooking a large bass. By the time we saw him it was already floating belly up on a stringer.
We also learned that a lot of the kids that go there to fish will stop at the fast food joint and pick up the cheap cheeseburgers. Then they'll use bits of that cheeseburger as bait. The bass have grown so accustomed to cheeseburger that it's difficult to catch them on lures and other plastic baits, they said. At first we were a little bummed about what this did to our chances of catching fish there, until we realized that if that's the case, then we're actually doing pretty well catching as many as we do on lures and flies.
So we got skunked during lunch, but were encouraged about the other times that we've had successful runs.
After I got home my wife mentioned that the Twilight sequel had come from Netflix and that she and my son were going to be watching it that evening. "Let me guess ... that means you're going fishing?" she asked. "Uh, yeah. That pretty much says it all." So I headed over to Harveston and got there around 8pm for some evening fishing.
I had been there for a while without any action at all, but I was still hopeful. With my trusty ribbontail dropshot rig I started working one of my regular areas.
~THUNK!
I set the hook and end up yanking my bait right out of the water. Missed him! I cast back out and start my retrieve.
~THUNK THUNK!
"There he is." I set the hook, but again nothing.
"Hmmm. He must be swiping at my bait; maybe protecting some fry. Or maybe he's short biting my bait and I'm setting the hook to early. Third time's a charm!" I cast out again.
As I'm beginning my retrieve my peripheral vision picked up movement behind me. That's pretty normal. There are usually people all over the place and many of them are walking their dogs. I looked back to see what had moved and saw a small dog sniffing around a tree about 25 feet behind my left shoulder.
"Ah, someone's taking advantage of the fact there are so few people here this late and they're letting their dog walk off-leash."
I keep fishing, waiting for that third strike.
"But I didn't see anyone behind that dog. Hmmm....."
I look again and it's still sniffing around the tree facing my direction.
"That's not a dog. Is it a cat? No, it's to big to be a cat. OH! I wonder if it's a racoon!!!"
(It was pretty dark there)
I don't know if it was ambient light from the lights around the sidewalk, or if a car drove by on the other side of the lake, but as those words crossed my mind light from somewhere fell on that little animal.
"That's not a racoon! THAT'S A SKUNK!!!!!" And now his attention was on me.
Forget my methodic retrieve, I need to get my bait out of the water fast. I started walking away as I reeled, and as I walked he walked. The more I walked, the more he walked. The faster I walked, the faster he walked.
"Holy cow! I can't believe I'm being chased by a skunk!!"
I get my bait out of the water and start jogging away. As I turned I saw the skunk running my way.
" 'Incontheevable!!!' You gotta be kidding me!!!"
I ran all the way to the other end of the lake, my backpack bouncing up and down behind me (not a pretty site), before I finally stopped, turned and looked again.
No skunk.
"Whew!"
At this point I should have taken this as a sign because I fished for about another hour and half (on the opposite side of the lake from the skunk, of course) and never felt another bite.
"I can't believe that little guy stole my fish!" I thought.
Ok, he didn't really steal it from me, as if I had already landed it. But after 2 solid hits I was sure that fish would've struck a third time and I would've had him.
Instead, the lake traded me a skunk for that fish. Man! What a metaphore!
So I got skunked twice yesterday, but I'll take that anyday over getting skunked by a real skunk.
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