About three weeks ago, my buddy Justin and I went to fish a farm pond. It is a place that I frequented quite a bit last spring and if you follow this blog closely, you probably recognize the spot. Besides the large amount of 2-3 pound largemouth bass in the pond, we had a sense of urgency on this particular day. The aforementioned pond is completely surrounded by row crops and those crops were limiting the accessibility to the water. In other words, we were running out of time to get to the pond until crop harvest this fall.
On our way to the pond, Justin asked if he could keep a few fish to feed to his family for dinner. I gave him the green light because the owner of the pond has always asked me to keep fish if I wanted them or if I thought the population needed to be thinned out some. Me and a couple of other folks have pulled some bass out of the pond for the past three years and there has been a noticeable improvement in terms of the size of the fish. The fish have gone from exclusively two pounders to some occasional three pounders! I figured that keeping a few bass was a win-win situation for Justin and the fish in the pond.
As we fished, we noticed that the number of fish we were catching was less than what we were used to. We were throwing the usual flies such as a 1/0 game changer and a big Lunch Money. I decided to try to catch some bluegill since the bass fishing was a little slow. We had enough bass to feed Justin and his family, so I thought I would see if the big bluegill in the pond were willing to take down a fly. I tied on a couple of size 6, unhackled wooly buggers and that’s when things took an unexpected turn.
To my surprise, I didn’t catch a single bluegill on this outing. Even more shocking was that I started to hook 2-3 largemouth bass more frequently than I had with the bigger flies I had been throwing. I didn’t land many because I was throwing a 5 weight rod with 6 pound leader. The fish would either get wrapped in vegetation or just become unhooked because of the size 6 hook. I unintentionally brought a knife to a gun fight and the bass were pretty good at shooting. I didn’t mind a bit though. It was fun to be overpowered by the fish. They had the advantage for once which made me feel more appreciative of their abilities. I did end up landing a few and those fish were the highlights of the morning.
Eventually, it started to get hot, the wind picked up, and we had to tend to the chore of mowing around my little hunting and fishing cabin. The fishing had slowed down and we had fished the entire pond, twice. We decided that it was time to start running mowers and clean some fish. As we were fileting the bass, it dawned on me that we should cut open some stomachs and see what the bass were feeding on.
It took exactly two largemouth bass stomachs to teach me a lesson. Each of them contained finger length bluegill. A memory hit me like a freight train. While fishing earlier that morning, I had see a lot of fry. While these fish had hatched this year, I saw one year old bluegill in the shallows as well. I can only assume that the bass were focused in catching more, small fish rather than fewer, larger meals. That would explain why I hooked more bass on a size 6 steamer rather than larger, 1/0 streamers.
I will be the first to tell you that I don’t know everything when it comes to fishing. I try to learn something every time I hit the water and to retain that information. I might brag to my wife that I feel like I know a lot about fishing, but the fact of the matter is that the amount of knowledge is a drop in a five gallon bucket. Fishing is. It something that someone ever masters. Yes, a person might know a lake/pond/river well enough to be an expert on the fishery, but if that person were put on an unfamiliar body of water, they would be challenged to some degree. One cannot master all types of fishing in all types of locations and in all conditions. It’s just not possible to accomplish in a lifetime.
John Buchan is credited for stating, “The charm of fishing is that it is the pursuit of what is elusive but attainable, a perpetual series of occasions for hope.” I love that quote and agree with it but I also subscribe to the ideal that hope is not a plan. I feel that if I have more knowledge, then I can formulate a better plan. What I learned on that fishing outing added to my knowledge and taught me a lesson that I will add to my mental fishing data base.