Big Indiana Bass

It's time to finish cleaning the tackle and prepping the boat, because the robins made their return to Central Indiana yesterday. I don't know for certain if they truly ever left, or if they just stay in some out of the way place, largely unnoticed. But I do know that every year there is a certain day when seemingly out of nowhere, robins appear everywhere feeding on the grounds around work. Yesterday was that day for 2008. I'm not talking 1 or 2 birds, this is more like a flock of 30-40, all hopping and pecking around any open ground they could find.

It could just be optimism, maybe there is nothing really to it, but I always view this influx of robins as meaning that spring (and the first fish of the year) are just around the corner. They're much more reliable than that groundhog in Pennsylvania, one of natures cues I believe. There are many others you can probably think of, many of which are tied to fishing somehow. You've probably heard the one about when the dogwoods are blooming, the bass are heading to the nest.

I tried to find an article last night (unsuccessfully) on spring bass fishing with Guido Hibdon. Guido mentions that he pays much more attention to natures cues and the overall time of the year when patterning spring bass than he does to the water temperature gauge on his boat. He was catching some big pre-spawn females toward the backs of creeks despite the water temps being cooler than what you'd traditionally expect for that pattern to be "on". I've also seen the scenario play out in reverse many times around here in early spring tourneys, and I love it when it happens. It's late March and you get a sunny spring day that tops out in the 60's or 70's, warming the backs of the coves and pockets into the low 50's. Everybody and their brother heads back there chasing the warmer water and the first spring bass, when the majority of them (the bass) are really just starting to stage out of deeper main lake water, largely unmolested. It's a great thing to keep in mind if you want to do well in those first tourneys around here. 

One of Indiana's newest and hardest working bass focused groups is the Indiana Smallmouth Alliance. Originally formed as an off-shoot of the Indiana Smallmouth message board, it has now grown to the point of being its own stand-alone organization. Its recent adoption as the state sub-chapter of the National Smallmouth Alliance completed this transition.

Largemouth get a lot of the attention in this state, but Indiana has a pretty impressive population of smallmouth in most of our creeks and rivers, as well as an abundance in our northern natural lakes and more recently the burgeoning population in Lake Michigan. This group is focused on working with state agencies and departments to promote the smallmouth and enhance the quality of its habitat in the state. Already it has supported two state Clean Water Indiana grants focusing on the Eel R. and the Wildcat Creek complexes, pledging $3,000 in total contributions. Members have also donated over $1,000 in in-kind contributions toward another Section 319 grant on the Big Walnut Creek.

Some of its other contributions to date have included working with tournament organizations to promote improved handling, rules and regulations, working each summer at the IDNR State Fair Kids Fishing pond, supporting recently adopted specialized smallmouth regulations on the Blue River and Sugar Creek, as well as sponsoring several important watershed related conferences throughout the state. They even ran their own fishing show each winter for the past 3 years in Franklin, Indiana.

Their most recent venture will be the Smallie-Stravaganza to be held this fall in late November. It will be an afternoon/evening gathering of smallmouth anglers from across the state to listen to some great speakers concerning not only fishing but the environment, a big raffle that will include guided trips, custom rods and lots of assorted smallmouth tackle, a buffet style dinner, fly tying and lots of fish stories. Check out their website at the link above in the opening paragraph and consider joining and supporting. It might be the most imporatant $20 you spend on fishing this year.

I started getting phone calls early this morning about dead fish all over the lake, so I headed out to take a look. We had a bubble of warm air move in overnight bringing air temperatures up to 50-60 degrees today. That, along with the rain started a good ice melting campaign. As the ice started to melt, hundreds of dead bodies started showing up (see pic - click to enlarge).

But upon closer examination, it turns out that everything dead happened to be a gizzard shad. This is a good thing from the lakes standpoint. Many times lake managers will intentionally try and induce a shad kill over the winter. This is exactly the case at West Boggs down south. They drop the water level 8 feet starting late in the year to compact the fish and stress the shad, then they hope for a good hard freeze that will typically result in a big die-off of shad. We didn't drop the lake but we have got the die-off. This is also the same intent behind the shad selectives which the IDNR carry out at lakes such as Glenn Flint or Waveland. Those are basically artificially induced shad kills that ultimately serve the same purpose.

As to what effect this will have on the fishery is still unknown. Here is a link to a 2004 fishery survey out of Nebraska for Stagecoach Reservoir. You'll note that they had a major shad winter kill back in 2000-2001 which ended up resulting in a strong year class of bass the following two years. Hopefully that will be the result on this lake.

Another interesting scenario this creates is a short term window of opportunity for one of the best catfish bites of the year. See page 6 of this Iowa DNR newsletter (Ice Out Catfishing). The ice in our area is still about 1" thick, and cold weather is headed back in for the next week. So I'm guessing the shad wil stay frozen in their little icy grave for the moment, but with a little luck and timing, we'll get a good warm-up soon that not only melts all the ice at once, but allows for me to get the boat out on the lake and capitalize on the catfish feeding binge. It won't last long but it could make for some memorable fishing. One thing I'm going to do different this year is to really try and take advantage of little "windows of opportunity" for specificly strong bites. This could end up being the first.