Last minute trip
I ran to the lake yesterday afternoon to see if I could
catch a few fish before Hurricane Isaac brought rain to the entire region. I was hoping that it would be better fishing
than this past weekend. Last weekend was
a brutal grind…it was exceptionally slow and emotionally I wasn’t ready for
another trip like that.
Around 3 PM I pointed my truck east and started my trip to
the lake. I had 100 miles of ground to
cover on gently rolling highway that makes a straight line through the farmland
of north Mississippi and southwest Tennessee.
In that 100 miles I passed through six or seven speed traps, got stuck
in traffic due to an accident on the highway, was hit by a downpour of rain,
and found out that the fuel dock at my marina was closed. I took all of it in stride. I stopped at an auto parts store and bought a
gas can along my route, found a detour around the accident, and bought some
non-ethanol gas for the boat right before I go to the marina. Now all I needed was for the fish to bite.
The weather was partly cloudy and windy…and the parts that
had clouds were big dark clouds. I was also
worried that the wind might have the lake chopped up with heaving rollers which
would severely limit my options and likely my success as well.
I backed the boat out of its stall and eased around the other
boats resting in their slips. When I got
around the end I could see the rock wall jetty that separates the marina from
the main lake. The wind was fairly
strong but due to its direction it couldn’t really chop the lake up…another
good sign. I idled over to a large rock
wall that forms one edge of the marina and planned to fish my way along it with
a spinner-bait to see if I could get some action before I left the marina.
I put my trolling motor on autopilot and pointed it parallel
to the wall and started pitching a white and chartreuse spinner bait. I made perhaps 20 casts with no action before
I got to the mouth of the marina. The
wind was a lot stronger here as it blasted through the opening between the high
rocky point on my left and the long rock-pile on my right. I was now sitting right in the middle of the
entrance to the marina…a gap maybe 60 yards wide and the fish finder was going
nuts.
Frenzy in the gap
With the fish finder going crazy I figured I better
investigate the area thoroughly before moving on. I had just cast my spinner-bait out toward
the rock-pile jetty and was walking back to look at the sonar when I got hung
on something. “Dang” I thought…”I’m hung
up on something deep”. The wind was
blowing, the water was moving, I was walking, and the boat was slipping
backward in the water a bit so it was tough to tell exactly what was going
on. I pulled harder on my line trying to
free it and it looked like the line was moving…but so many things were moving
at the moment that it was tough to tell.
I reeled against the line and it appeared to be coming in…but
it was still heavy and still deep…and then the line really started moving. It took off to the right, straight toward the
“no wake” buoy in the middle of the entrance channel. I wasn’t even out of the marina yet and I had
a fish on the line! That first fish
fought like a champ…ultimately he was fighting way above his weight class. He was only a 2.5 lb. largemouth but I’ve had
bigger fish fight less. It was a nice
start to the evening trip.
Now I was really curious about this spot. I had the lake entirely to myself at this
point. One or two fishing boats had come in off the water but there was nobody
left. The parking lot was empty and the
only company I had were these fish and about 60 boats lying empty in their
slips.
It was late afternoon, it was quiet, not too hot, and the
wind removed any hint of humidity that might have been there. Amidst this solitude the circus began. I could now see schooling fish rising from
the depths and racing each other to hit smaller fish on top. The sonar was still going crazy with beeps
indicating fish in the area and there were sporadic top-water strikes all
around me.
I saw a feeding frenzy on top not 15 feet from my boat so I
put the spinner bait down and I grabbed a spinning reel rigged with a green
Senko. A Senko is the most plain-Jane
lure ever created. It is a stick of
rubber designed to look like a Bic ball point pen…very unremarkable. But the action of the lure turns out to be
wonderful. It floats horizontally, and
if you give it a twitch it darts one way of the other and then resumes its
horizontal float. This makes it a very
tempting target for a predator like a bass.
It’s long and skinny and helpless looking and it makes a huge tactical
mistake every time it moves. It bolts
quickly which gets everyone’s attention (Look at me! Look at me!) …and then it stops…which makes
it ridiculously easy to kill. This thing
is about as tempting and vulnerable as bacon on an all-you-can-eat buffet. Everyone likes to eat it and it can’t get
away.
So I toss my Senko into the fray. I was amazed to sit there and watch these powerful
green fish racing alongside each other as they competed to see who ate
first. This was the food chain in action...survival
of the fittest in real-time. I watched
as the four-fish group quickly hammered their target and then broke away from
each other in different directions. Once
the crime had been committed they scattered…and one was moving directly toward
my Senko. He was making a gradual
descent into the green depths as he approached my boat and when I thought the
timing was right I twitched the Senko once…then twice…then BOOM. He had it.
Fish on! This was a smaller fish
and I caught it just a few feet from the boat so there wasn’t much of a fight
but it was fun and I had clearly stumbled onto something here. I had just caught two fish on two different
lures at the mouth of the marina.
OK…that was cool. But
can I catch another one from this area? This
time I started casting toward the outside of the rock jetty. I wanted to see how much of an area these
fish were occupying. After a few casts I
hooked up with another hard fighting bass.
This was crazy. I enjoyed the
fight, the weather, the solitude, and the surroundings. After landing him I quickly tossed him back
started to think.
What was the deal? Why
was the fishing good right here, right now?
What are the conditions that are driving this feeding frenzy? A quick survey of my surroundings gave me
some clues. The wind was pushing hard
straight into the mouth of the marina.
This could be causing some current that is forcing bait fish into the
area where the predators are stacked up and waiting on them. As much as it’s a success story about bass
fishing it could alternately be written as a shad’s worst nightmare…a strong
current pushing you down an alley full of murderers bent on your destruction. Yeah…that’s a small fish’s nightmare for sure
but today it was a dream come true for me.
After giving some quick thought to the conditions that might
be creating this frenzy I had to get back to fishing. I picked up a rod loaded with a chatter-bait
and I tossed it toward the cliff that formed the left side of the marina
entrance. The chatter-bait vibrates like
a small jack-hammer as you wind it back to you. It wobbles and vibrates and puts off some
commotion that makes it easier for a bass to track it. It feels kind of like you’re holding an
electric toothbrush when you’re working it…until something hits it…which happened
at that moment with a hard thud. The small
vibrating retrieve disappeared with a heavy thump and my line started cutting
toward deeper water just outside the marina. It was a good fight but this fish wasn’t
getting away. It was destined to see the
inside of my boat just as the others had.
The fight grew a lot harder as I drew the fish toward the boat…which
made me think it might be a smallmouth.
Closer and closer it came diving deep each time I got near it. Ultimately I pulled a bronze colored smallmouth
bass from the water. Now I had another fact
to ponder. The largemouth were all
caught to my right where the deep water meets the man-made rock-pile
jetty. This smallmouth was to my left
where a natural cliff/rock wall fell to the water line leaving a scattering of
small boulders lying about before descending to deeper water. I filed that info and got back to work.
Moving on
I wanted to see if I could catch some more smallmouths so I
eased out of the marina and worked the natural shoreline to the left because it
was the same boulder strewn landscape where I caught that last fish. I worked methodically for the next 50 yards
but I came up empty. Now the plan was to
go back and work the other direction…along the man-made rock-pile jetty.
I figured I’d ease my way down 50 yards of that structure and
then move on. There were several other
places I wanted to try out while the fish seemed to be in the biting mood. I hated to leave a big school of biting fish
but I really wanted to try some other places and techniques while the
conditions seemed optimal.
I got one strike as I moved down the rock-pile to the right
of the entrance. It wasn’t a really
committed strike and nothing came from it.
After 50 yards I pulled up the trolling motor, sat down, fired up the
big motor and started to idle away…but then I saw something on the sonar. It looked like a big ball of baitfish sitting
on the bottom with some other larger fish around them. A fleeting thought turned into a plan and
then into action as I killed the big motor and grabbed a rod holding a heavy
jig. Out of sheer curiosity I wondered
if I could put a big jig down there in the middle of that action and draw a
strike. Normally I wouldn’t waste my
time with such a move…after all I had just fished along the length of it with
no luck. But today I was brimming with confidence…I
was on a roll. Why not try it? I pitched the huge jig with a tube trailer
straight toward the rock-pile that was perhaps 40 feet behind me.
After it hit the bottom I heaved it up twice and let if fall
back down…nothing. I heaved it up twice
again and let it fall…BAM! Before it hit
the bottom something smacked it. I
heaved back on the rod and felt it load up heavy…something was on the other end
now. I was laughing as I brought this
fish up. It was clearly another
largemouth bass and I could see my orange/brown lure in his mouth when he
breached the surface trying to shake loose. I wanted to tell him that it was a waste
of time fighting…today was my day and there was nothing he could do about it.
In just over half an hour I had used five different lures to
catch five bass. This was so easy it was
like I was the king of these fish…I was ruling them…everything was
working. I was catching fish at will with
any lure I chose to use. At this point I
felt as if I could just slam my hand down into the water grizzly-bear-style and
snatch a fish up. It was ridiculously
good fishing. It was the type of day
that keeps you coming back for the rest of your life. I was putting a bona-fide MMA type beat down
on these fish. I was dropping elbows on
them, putting them in rear-choke-holds…heck I even put a fish in a Kimora…and
that’s tough to do because fish don’t have arms.
After catching the fifth fish I sat down at the console of
my boat with a huge smile on my face and I surveyed my surroundings. Here I was on the Pickwick Lake, surrounded
by high forested hills and bountiful waters.
A huge lumbering barge slowly churned its way toward me in the distance. It was the only other boat on the water and
it was perhaps 4 miles away. The sight
of that barge set against the tree-topped rocky cliffs behind it was a sight I
could have sat and watched for an hour.
It’s serene. I fish a lot of
places and see a lot of things on the water…but when I see a barge pushing
through the river channel with those hills behind it I know I’m home. Sitting here alone catching fish, with no
traffic, no phone, no e-mail…no stress.
Decision Time
Now I had a decision to make. Do I stay here at the marina and keep
pounding these fish? Or do I try to take
advantage of these conditions by seeing where else I can catch them (and
learning more lessons in the process)?
Ultimately I decided that this was the perfect time to move
on. I’d caught a limit in a hurry which
meant that as long as I didn’t get hit by the only other boat on the lake (the
barge) the day was a complete success no matter what I did next. I decided it was time to do some
learning. My next stop was a hump out in
the main river channel. The idea was to
throw a heavy jig, wait for it to hit the bottom, and then hop it back to me
along the bottom.
The first part of the plan went great. I heaved that big jig down river toward the
barge in the distance and then I watched my spool. I watch the spool so I can tell when the jig
has hit the bottom. It will give line
continuously and then stop when the jig makes contact with the lake floor. Then I start my retrieve.
I was casting into maybe 30 foot of water so I knew about
how long it should take before I’d see the spool stop. I’m looking straight down at my reel the
whole time. After about 10 or 15 seconds
the spool is still going. “Hmmm…maybe I’m
stronger than I realize and I tossed it way out into deeper water.”
The spool continued. I
watched as the spool got to “new line”.
This was line buried so deep in spool that it had never seen the water
on a normal cast. I was shocked that
this much line was leaving my reel.
What on earth could be going on?
I looked up more to make sure my trolling motor was holding my on my
spot than anything else when I realized my line wasn’t where I cast it. It was now far off to the right of my
boat. Could a fish have hit it on the
way down? No way…but I’d better set the
hook just in case. I yanked back hard on
the rod but he jig just came toward me with no resistance.
I was confused…so I figured I’d start over. Again I cast downriver toward the barge and
again the reel gave waaaaaay too much line. Then it dawned on me…this is
current…a very strong current. Pickwick
is a power generating lake with a hydro-electric dam at each end. When they let water out they can use one or
more generators…the more they open the more water they “pull” from the lake. This was more current than I had ever seen
on the lake. I’ve got a heavy jig with a
tube trailer on my line and it simply cannot reach the bottom in this
current. It is being swept sideways and
past me on every cast.
Now a light has really gone off in my head. The fishing has been so good today because
all of this current. The combination of
the wind and the current is changing the playing field. Now I just need to read the landscape to find
places where the baitfish will be pushed…and I’ll find the bass.
With the puzzle finally solved I set out in search of places
“like” the marina entrance. I wanted
places creek mouths with deep water nearby and potential “slack water” areas
where fish could stage...and the wind had to be pushing into the creek
mouth. Basically every creek mouth for
the next four miles should work…I just had to hit them to see if the fish were
home.
All good things…
It was getting late and the sun had just dropped behind a
huge cloud bank on the western horizon.
As it did so it set the edges of the cloud ablaze with a fiery orange
fringe that made the cloud itself seem impossible grey. I had to work faster than the sun was
dropping if I was going to get to all the places I wanted to hit. The only bad feeling I had on this trip was
when the sun started getting low. It was
a timer that couldn’t be slowed and it was reminding me in the starkest terms
than my great fishing day would soon be over.
I hit the gas and went to my next spot. Despite the wind, the water was still pretty
smooth and I flew up river with the water rushing by and new sights coming into
view and just the most unbelievably comfortable weather you could ask for. Spot
after spot I checked with not much success.
The final spot I had picked out was just covered up with fish. The sonar was beeping like a terrorist going
through a metal detector and I was really excited that the plan was
working. Before I could make many casts
it was dark. I have no problem fishing
after dark but I had told the wife I’d be home to hang out with her by 9:30 and
I had to leave now to make that happen.
I left with a big smile on my face and nobody around to see
it. I had a short 2 mile run back to
the marina but I could see 6 miles downriver.
I saw no one. It seemed as though
I had the entire 50 mile long lake entirely to myself. I
flew along in complete peace making only one stop right there at the mouth of
the marina for “one more cast”. I
pitched a few more times for good measure but nobody wanted to play.
I put the boat back in its slip, jumped in the truck and
drove home victorious. This morning the
wife asked me how I slept and I said that I slept great…unlike the fish who
slept with shame and fear and embarrassment if they slept at all. Oh yeah…and sore mouths. The trash talk really never stops when you’re
having a good day.
In fishing, as in life itself, you don’t get too many days
like this so you just have to sit back and enjoy them when you can. Tomorrow it will be the fish’s turn to gloat but
today…today it’s mine.
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