Big Indiana Bass

"So ... you going to get in the boat or talk on the phone?" 

'The Stick' pockets the cellphone & steps aboard. I'm surprised both couldn't be done simultaneously but ... nevermind. We're rigged & ready for what we are sure will be a full day of fast action - you know, just like on the teee-veee fish'n shows where every cast results in a slob of a fish being reeled in.

There's nothing quite like that first look at the water, be it completely familiar, or half way accross the country. The anticipation of what's to come is big medicine indeed. We start down a typical bank ,doing the typical things, using the typical baits. Blah squared.

"The water looks sooo good", comments 'The Stick', and indeed, the level and color are ideal. "Perfect", I reply. It doesn't take long to get a rhythm going, despite the constantly swirling & gusting wind; cast, retrieve, repeat. Hitting every nook & cranny, look at us - precise & efficient even when spinning downstream like an episode of Keystone Cops. Damn we're good. 'The Stick' doesn't even complain about me constantly swinging the boat around to reposition in the wind/current.

The thing is ... we're not getting bit. "But the water looks sooo good". Words that were to be repeated throughout the day. 'The Stick' picks up a spinning outfit with ... a tube rigged up. "A bit early to be reaching for a crutch, don't-cha think? Thought we were here to chuck some manly hardware", I snicker, doing my best to sound disgusted.

'The Stick' swills some Dr. Pepper and starts casting, saying nothing. We fish, and fish, and fish some more. Zip, zilch, nada, nosiree. "Time to change the scenery", I confidently proclaim while pulling up the trolling motor.

Downstream we go, another sexy looking bit of water and 'The Stick' manages to get a couple of swats on the tube, but thats it for another 1/4 mile or so.

We fish an incoming creek. Nothing.
We fish a deep rock bank. Nothing.
We fish every current break in the southern half of the county. Grim.

We stuff the boat up a small creek and get a couple of bites. Fine, but there's nowhere else to go but back out where we've been flailing for the past 3 hours. We press on.

The order of the day is being established, clarity of purpose is rendered, it's now clear just exactly what has gone wrong with our well laid plans ; we are victims.

Victims of wind ingestion, as in "sucking wind". Because ... we mostly suck, and wind is all there is. It's evident that all the fishes were removed the night before. By some cruel act of God.

Now I have no problem with this developing scenario, been there, done that. T-shirts galore. Matter of fact, I embrace the suckage, it's liberating, allows one to let go of the self imposed duty to try and catch something.

'The Stick' bears down, he's not giving up nearly as easily, convinced the day can be salvaged with just one big bite. This mindset is likely true, a really big fish would, in fact, be a 'day saver', so the premise does have merit. But there's other things to do as well; there's a beer to drink, a cigar to smoke & some tidying up to do in the boat. Messy house - sign of good character; Messy car - self confident individual with no hidden agenda; but a cluttered boat .... well that's just poor upbringing.

The fishing continued, and continued, 'The Stick' soldiered on, his herculean efforts were rewarded with ... a couple more smallish fish. A few more changes of scenery, some more angst ridden angling, then a moment of beautiful perfection that altered the tenor for the balance of the day. We suddenly came to realize that we were'nt having that bad a day after all.

This is what a really bad day looks like:

With brand spanking new perspectives in hand, we took to looking around at what we may have been missing along the way.

Like giant sycamores making their last stand against an unrelenting river:

Or the simple fact that it's finally spring!!

We round a bend and shoot down some fast water. Upon settling in the pool, we both look up, "holy crap, what's in that tree?"

"Big-assed birds nest of some sort, I guess".
This thing was the size of .. a Volkswagon, no kidding:

Even more impressive was the guardian of this vacation rental (apologies for the grainy images, best I could muster).

We watched as he flew around a bit, not happy about our presence in his turf.

8 PM - time to call it a day, we make the run downstream, the sun is low & filtering through trees getting their first leaves of the season, we run through alternating pockets of noticably cooler air, it's a nice boat ride.

'The Stick' makes one last cast as I'm tying up the boat.

-as told by Asshat

Spawners that is. I've been getting reports all weekend of bass on beds from across central Indiana. With the largely stabilized water levels and probably more importantly the 80+ degree weather, surface temps have started to baseline near 60 degrees and the fish have responded. This is still just the initial wave, and I'd expect much better nesting in about 2 weeks as we approach the first full moon in May. That should be prime, but many of the larger fish will be going now with the current wave. BTW, these bedding reports have included smallmouth in many of our local rivers, so waders be careful when tromping around the backwater eddies.

On a more somber note, fishing for me out on the river Saturday was largely a bust. I've started hanging around asshat so much I was even seen debarbing a few tube hooks on Saturday. That was about the only bite we could get going and the numbers were small, which also matched the size. Another of asshat's thought processes that is starting to make things turn in my mind is his "sucker shot" mentality. Asshat wants biting fish, lots of them and preferably with some size as an added bonus. If it doesn't happen in the first hour or two, it probably isn't happening at all and he'd just as soon head back home and enjoy the rest of the day as opposed to staying the course, fighting and struggling trying to force something to happen. You can always come back the next day and perhaps the timing will be better. Life as an angler is so much easier when you find biting, cooperative fish.

As it was, being the gracious host he is and knowing I had made the sacrifice of a 2 hour round trip drive just to go fishing, he stuck it out...and we struggled to the point where I was even ready for it to end (sort of) after nearly 6 hours. I've come to the realization that having to fish when you can, as opposed to fishing when you want, really sucks. It is becoming a new found goal in life to be able to someday obtain the latter, the sooner the better. Material objects and responsibilities have taken a serious hit in my mind this past weekend.

This has also spurred me to create the "sucker shot meter". Now, without even reading a single word of a trip report I post, you'll be able to tell exactly how good the fishing was. I haven't figured out a way to make this a handy little carry along device yet, sort of like your tacklebox barometer. It also isn't predictive, though if it ever became such I might make a small fortune and be able to finally fish when I wanted. I'm still working on that part. But it is based on a simple mathematical calculation which can easily be defined, so it's not a subjective thing either. You'll be hearing more about it in the future, I'm sure.