Change for the Better

So, a lot has gone down in my life since I've written anything of substance.  It's all been voluntary, it all gone according to plan, and I think it's all been for the good.  In the last couple of months, I've acquired and/or undertaken:

• New Teeth
• New Smile
• New Home
• New City 
• New Job 
• New Home Lake

Apparently, I've also acquired a New Attitude about day-to-day life and work, because in just the last few days my longest-term and closest friend verbally recognized my change for the better, and a new-but-trusted co-worker mentioned that he couldn't even imagine me wound up over work.  I might even be starting to believe that my efforts towards multifaceted self-improvement might be working!

This is all reward enough, but let's explore how this isn't just about life and work, it's about fishing, too!

My new home lake might now be Lake St. Clair, and it's a large, shallow body of water.  It gets rough and muddy, and my limited experience there indicates that neither of these is conducive to my bass fishing.  The last weekend was Super Windy, out of many points on the compass, and Monday (my targeted day for fishing) was simply Less Windy.  Given these conditions (and incorporating cost, lack of good intelligence, risk of failure, fear of failure, general lack of confidence and such), Old Steve wouldn't have undertaken a trip, even to a world-class fishery such as Lake St. Clair.

That's fine, as there are many other decent options available, but when one is so close to so many giant smallmouth bass, and the window on the availability of pre-spawn lunkers is closing, should not one who really cares about such things at least give it a shot?  After all, the dream is valid, and there are no real consequences to failing; and so New Steve decided, What the heck?  Why hold myself back?  Let's go!

And so I did go!  I came home, 13 hours later with a half-broken spine (figuratively, but descriptive) and one less tooth (literally.)  I'd gotten two bass bites all day, the water was stained to muddy in my area of choice, and Lake St. Clair had beaten me into submission with wind and boat chop.

But it was a Good Day!  It was a weekday fishing expedition, after all, and one of the two bass bites turned into a Master Angler giant, possibly one of my Top 2 or 3 smallmouths ever, and certainly the largest ever aboard Numenon.  

But this wasn't even the best part of the day!  The day was another learning experience for me, and I know I'll take the best of what I learned (locations, logistics, presentations, boat control) with me on future trips.  I'm more prepared for whatever comes my way.

This is NOT a bad way to operate.  It might be Kaizen, it might be Appreciative Inquiry, it might be just good luck, but it might become natural.

Work hard, be smart, do your best and enjoy some occasional good fortune!

Brown Bass Road Trip

You can check out the specifics of my recent Brown Bass Road Trip here (should you so choose), but let me simply say that the act of fishing just leads to good things.  Whether it's being close to the home of potentially giant bass, recognizing the health of a vibrant lake, sharing meals with friends or just temporarily sharing an elevated lifestyle with the one you love, I am more likely to encounter these and many other good things when I am out fishing.

Private dock on a Northern Michigan lake; not bad, eh?

I've got a thing for brown bass.

I've got a thing for all bass!

Why else would I experience such sights, except that I am out chasing fish?

Silhouettes

How many big bass can a guy lose in a season?  And why does each large lost bass take the time to pose, briefly yet clearly, for the angler to see what's getting away?  And why does that silhouette burn its way deep into one's memory?

Earlier this season, Katie spent a full day of bass fishing with me. We were both under the tutelage of a local guide, and Katie was doing pretty well on topwaters and jerk baits, even though it was the first time she'd ever explicitly targeted bass.  While she was doing OK, I was getting much more action, and larger bass to boot, while slowly fishing black rubber worms.  After I caught what would prove to be the largest bass of the day, she decided to try worming, too.

In short order, she got bit.  I'm not sure either she or the bass knew they were connected at first, but when it became apparent to both me and the guide that she had a fish on, we were all paying attention.  The bass came to the surface right beside the boat, jumped and flared, giving all three of us a perfect view; and calmly threw the hook.  We all were in shock at the size of the bass we'd just seen; but she was gone, and there was little to do other than continue on.  Katie redeemed herself shortly there-after with a solid 3-pounder, but I think we'd all agree that the even more solid 5-pounder we'd just seen was the Fish of the Day.

From the web - but if this guy showed a little more tail, it would be a ringer for Katie's lost bass.

But how many times can this same scene be repeated?  I've a spot on a local lake that doesn't yield a lot of bass; but the bass I encounter are always large; all 4-to-6 pounders so far.  So of course I visit this location, at least briefly, during every bass expedition on this lake.  Shortly after my trip with Katie, I was just about to leave this spot, empty-handed, so to speak, when I made a long cast and then felt a slight "tap" on a slow-rolled chatterbait.  I swung and came tight, briefly, only to have to race to keep a tight line.  I caught up with the bass at about the time she broke the surface.  She was definitely my biggest of the season, and we went through the required choreography: present broad side; flare gills; (I swear, make eye contact!); tail walk; nod head; throw hook.

From the web.

And it's not just largemouths.  On my first trip this fall to my stretch of "rediscovered" Grand River, at just about the time I was ready to write off the trip, I caught a real nice smallie.  A few casts later, I set the hook and a much nicer smallie literally went ballistic and launched herself above eye-level.  She was perfectly back-lit, perfectly silhouetted, definitely the bass of the day, and probably the smallie of the year.  Of course, she returned to the water's surface unhooked, having tossed my senko aside during her flight.  But that's OK; she's the reason I went back the next day, only to lose a similar-sized largemouth in much the same manner.

From the web - based on the style of art, it looks like this has been taking place for quite a while!

So how many big bass can a guy lose in a season?  Unless I'm in a tournament, I guess I don't care.  So long as I occasionally bring one to hand, "As many others as possible!", I propose, would be the best answer.  These are powerful fish, the ones that keep me coming back for more.

New-to-me Water

DATE: September 15, 2012

LOCATION:    Grand River, Riverside Park

With:  Alone, Arracuda        

TIME:             9:30 AM – 1 PM

HOURS:          3.5

WEATHER/CONDITIONS: Clear and pretty calm; following the chilliest night of the season; a little post cold-fronty and very clear water (>6 feet)

At the odd time of 9:30 AM I launched the Arracuda on new-to-me water; the Grand River at Riverside Park.  I couldn’t use the southernmost ramp because bikers and such (non-trailers) had taken all the parking; and was surprised to see that there was no trailer parking planned or available at the middle ramp.  I was also excited to be sharing the park with 10,000 dogs and owners, as it is “Dog in the Park Day”: I hadn’t attended this event since Katie was in a stroller.  But pretty uneventfully, I launched her, separated the trailer from the truck, parked, and set out.  I was please to see that the Lowrance Finder from the front of Numenon works fine with the Arracuda set-up; her actual finder is in Benzie County on another boat at the moment.

Today’s published flow for the Grand is 1150 cfs; this is only about 2/3 median flow for the date.

Grand River?  Connecticut River?

I was surprised at the clarity of the water (easily over 5 feet, even with the low sun angle; and definitely over 6 feet later in the day with a higher sun), and with low flow conditions, a lot of the woody cover I expected to fish was actually high and dry; I continued upriver until the deeper channel intersected the eastern shore, which was shadier in the morning.  My first cast with the senko got hit; and the tone for the day was kind of set, because it was a smallish fish that I didn’t land.  (I had lots of short strikes and missed fish today.)  But shortly thereafter a sub-legal pike came aboard, and so the skunk was out of the boat; and I went searching for some different fish.

And I saw a bunch of different fish!  Folks on shore were catching gills and crappies, I sight-fished for both kinds of bass and pike, the Grand is apparently a Quillback Carpsucker Mecca, and I even watched one lost steelhead roaming about; not to mention all the suckers and baitfish I saw. 

Across the river from where I started was a gravelly flat with sporadic weeds; and while I didn’t have any strikes here, I did see a number of legal bass (LMB and SMB), and I think this area will pay off with sluggos, rapalas or topwaters during low light periods in the future.  Moving upriver (near the bridges), I concentrated on rock piles, wood and shade; and things started to come together.  Most of the rest of the strikes came on senkos, although cranks, jerkbaits, swimbaits and worms were given a chance.  I ended up with several SMB to 16 inches (most were sublegal), one LMB of about 15”, a Newman, and a cut-off.  I also jumped and lost a few fish, including one gorgeously silhouetted SMB of probably 3 pounds; a very nice fish to lose.

Best fish of the day!

The fishing was good enough to keep me interested, and I’ll probably return.  I’d like to think I haven’t been overlooking this SMB water for the last 20 years; but I guess I have.  I’ve caught a bunch of smallies in the Grand, but they’ve tended towards the small size; and today’s 16-incher and the lost lunker were both much better than average.  So rethinking it,  I know I’ll be back.

Catch and Release

When I was a kid and somebody actually caught a fish, the standard practice among my peers of the time was to stomp on the fish and immobilize it underfoot; probe, twist and pull as necessary; and possibly "chimprovise" and use a tool such as a stick to provide extra reach or leverage.  Hook extracted, the fish may have been strung up, released or purposelessly tossed up on shore.  I learned pretty early on that pre-snelled hooks could simply be snipped off in the fish and my "leader" extended with pre-tied loop-to-loop knots.  This made for easy releases, but I wasn't a 10-year-old made out of money, and so that wasn't a practical long-term solution.  We didn't catch a lot of fish, and some were kept for the table, but the carnage still piled up.  Not like the frog and bird hauls that could be accumulated quickly with a BB gun (largely the interest of another set of kids), but I'm sure we weren't exactly fostering our fisheries.

Now "The Pond" had bass, and they're fun to catch, so-called "sport" fish.  They're also not so spikey, have big mouths, and provide handy grips with their rubbery, sandy lips.  They were available in limited numbers, I had a long future ahead of me, and they taste pretty much like swamp gas.  So they made perfect candidates with which to practice catch and release.  I'm glad I caught onto this, because I recycled the bass in The Pond, which I otherwise could have easily over-fished.  As it worked out, I caught many of them multiple times.  While there were others that I encountered less frequently, these were large enough to be interesting, and they were released in the hope they'd re-appear later, and larger.  They often did, until the winterkill of about 1981 - 1982, when The Pond revealed them for the last time, along with several GIANT bass that had quietly eluded me for years.  The mystery of those few giants instilled new interest in me for these habitats, the fish, and the sport itself.

Early season catchin' and releasin'

Striped bass have many of these same attributes, and I'd like to say that I can see for myself that catch and release practices on these fish are effective.  I've caught previously tagged and released bass, and just this season I'd say that about 10% of my captured stripers showed obvious signs of having been previously hooked and released.  With such a vast ocean, the stripers' big migrations, so many places to hide and my puny efforts in their capture; if I can detect some evidence of catch and release effectiveness...imagine the importance of these practices on smaller waters.  Perhaps the primary reason I've stayed with fishing is that I released those Pond bass; and was able to catch them again.  Let's face it, catching fish is more engaging than simply fishing, especially for a child.  If I'd caught these fish just once, perhaps I'd have moved on to other activities out of boredom.  A basic tenet of environmental protection now is re-use of materials; I was doing that with my Pond long ago, unwittingly; but effectively and convincingly.

Stripers are made for catch-and-release.  Note the circle hook!

I'm not against legally harvesting fish for the table or as trophies, but I usually don't.  I don't necessarily enjoy eating them, and I get too much of a kick from reviving a worthy opponent, feeling his recovery, and witnessing him swimming away.  I'm motivated, too, by the possibility of catching him again.  Or perhaps another kid will catch my fish, and I'll catch somebody else's generous releases.  And while I have bittersweet feelings about running away from active fish, there have been times when I've been more concerned about limiting my catch, as opposed to catching my limit, just because of possible mortality associated with unsuccessful releases.  Not all fish are as amenable to catch and release as my bass.  These fish have been left alone, rather than risking unwanted mortality.

I'm convinced, catch and release is important for certain game fisheries.  I'll respect your informed opinions, but please consider the use of circle hooks with your bait, follow all regulations, make good use of the fish you keep, and take a kid like me (or at least like I was) fishing with you every so often.

36 inches of striper swimming away - Thanks, Captain Patterson!