Just a little "Catch-Up"

It’s a new year, and it’s been quite awhile since my last blog.  We are in the middle of a good old fashion Iowa Winter, and I have the fishing blues.  So much so that I have even considered a trek out on the ice with a seasoned and very experienced ice fishermen, @Todd Reed!   If only he’d invite me…..:).

                Couple things new……..one, we have a new Grandson.  Mason Dale Jenkins was born on 12-26-12, weighed in at 7lbs, 10ozs and was 19” long.  He lost about 10 ounces right after coming out, but he is already putting that back on with a vengeance.   He’ll be a big boy, two weeks in and he’s already getting longer too!  I told Amanda that they just didn’t get a good measurement on him when he was born, but Michael says they did.  Must be like measuring a bass……they relax a little after being in the live well and always measure a bit longer.  Maybe babies relax a little too!  He’s doing well.  Grandpa (me) and Grandma (Kim) were both under the weather the week we stayed with Amanda, unfortunately, so while we still held him, we were pretty cautious.  Me more than Kim, but it appears everything is A-OK.

Second, we got to spend plenty of time with Olivia.  She was the one that started the whole sickness thing to begin with!  We had a nice Christmas with the kids down there and one afternoon, Kim and I were playing with Olivia and we got her to take a few steps.  Every day since then, she has gotten better and better, taking more and more steps.  She will have it mastered in no time.  The look on our faces when she took off walking…..well, I’m sure I’d like to see that on camera! 

Big Bass Club Meeting tonight, Cedar Valley Bass Masters  Not sure what I’m going to do in that regard. Was thinking that maybe I would just take a back seat position this year and be a non-boater for my remaining time in Iowa, but not sure I really want to do that.  Would like to find a partner that pays half of the expenses for my weekend trips to the river, but that has proven difficult.  Turns out, either they are broke, or, their work schedules haven’t sync’d up with the tournament schedules.  Either way, it means I have taken on the majority of the expenses and I’m not sure I’m willing to do that again this year.   Even with a couple of paying sponsors last year, (Thank you BW Contractors and Roling Ford), it was tough to stretch the dollars to last an entire season.  Matter of fact, it was impossible to stretch it for an entire season.  We’ll see what happens, not sure what I’m going to do at this point.  Either find a partner and run my boat, find a new partner that needs a non-boater and go that route, or, just fish to fish.   Either way, I’ll be on the water come March, guarantee that!

It’s going to be an interesting year for Kim and I.  Many unknowns coming our way.  I think we are prepared for them and I feel we are in position to tackle each as they come along.   More later.

Ever Have That Feeling?

There is a point, in every young tournament fisherman's life, where they do something they know they shouldn't have done.  I'm not young anymore, but I made that mistake last weekend, and it was costly.  Mostly from a pride standpoint.  I knew when I made the decision to fish where we were going that it was, at best, iffy.  We needed a couple good fish, and I was after the big bite for sure, but more importantly, we needed 5 fish.  My partner, Steve Pasker, and I talked about what we were going to do the night before after fishing all day and only having 5 keeper fish.  I felt like we could go North, jump around or "run and gun" five fish.  While the bite might have been light, it was decent from a weight standpoint.  With the water being high, and steady, I felt like we could probably piece together a decent bag. 

Then we talked about it again on the way to the ramp Sunday morning.  Then we talked about it again in the boat.  Each time, it was me that initiated the conversation, mostly because I wasn't feeling very good about it.  As it turned out, there was good reason.

We didn't catch anything at our first stop.  Nothing at the second either.  Or the third, or the fourth.  Steve finally hooked up with a really nice smallmouth at our fifth stop.  It was more of the same after that.  The fish just weren't cooperating on the North end of the pool at all.  My decision was looking worse and worse by the minute, which, were ticking away much too quickly.

At some point, you just have to realize you made a mistake and head to where you think the fish might be.  We went back down towards the south and stopped at a place that had been pretty good to me in the past.  Nothing!  We moved up the slot, stopped, first cast and POW.  I hooked up with a big 3lb largemouth.  Now we had two fish, still needed three more. We continued to fish hard, but nothing else came our way. 

We made it back to the weigh-in and were not surprised to hear and see that there were some nice 5 fish limits.  I really wanted to just crawl in my truck and get the heck out of there, so I did. While I was driving home, I replayed everything in my mind over and over only to come to the same conclusion;  We fished an area on Saturday in an effort to learn more about the pool, which was the right thing to do.  It was wrong, after struggling on Saturday a bit, to think Sunday would be any better.  I knew where we could catch 5 fish, I wanted 5 better fish. Truth is, it there were 5 okay fish in the southern edge of the pool, then there was probably as good a chance as any that we'd run across one that was "better".

I learned it's okay to poke around that big body of water known as the Mississippi river when the lights aren't on.  But when the lights come on, stick with what you know and you'll always bring five fish to the scale.  Better luck next time!

On the Board

     There comes a time, every year, when the desire to fish wins out over everything else.  The last week or so has been that way for me.  A week ago today is when it started for me.  I went down to a local park and caught a couple little walleye and a small sauger.  They all went back in to fight another day, just like the bass I catch.  Later that day, I went looking for Mr. Small Mouth and Mr. Large Mouth, but was unable to get either.

The next day, I went to a different spot on the Cedar River, and got skunked again looking for the suddenly elusive Smallmouth bass.  My luck got better early yesterday morning when on the second cast, I hooked a nice little keeper smallie.

That was it though.  Threw for them for a couple hours, and nothing.  All that smallmouth did was get the competitive juices flowing even harder, so, I devised a plan.

I knew of a small pond that I've been meaning to fish for some time.  To get in there, I was going to need permission.  I left the river on a mission to get permission and that's exactly what I did.  I was excited to finally have the opportunity, but it wouldn't come until later on Sunday afternoon because of prior committments we had on Sunday.

As Sunday wore on, I was getting more and more excited about what "might" happen later that day. I was fairly confident that I'd have the opportunity to put some fish on the end of my line, but what was I going to use?  I asked my wife, who knew I was getting antsy, "what should I use to catch the monster bass I'm going to catch later"?  Her answer was one word....Chartreuse!  I looked at her and said, Okay, sounds good!  Right then, I knew I was throwing a spinnerbait today.  I also knew that with 30mph winds, gusting higher, that I would need to be strategically located in order to take full advantage of it.  The time came and I was off and running. 

I arrived at the semi-private pond and headed for the near corner.  After a few casts, had a pretty little large mouth grab the spinnerbait and game was on! Among bass fisherman, this next picture is the sign of a good day on the water.  When your thumb is all tore up from taking fish off the end of your line, its a very satisfying feeling.

The following are the pictures of the the bigger fish that I started catching shortly after I started fishing this afternoon.  It was, without a doubt, the best afternoon of fishing I've ever had, and it all came from fishing off the bank! Hard to imagine what it might have been like pitching plastics from a boat!

I know most of you have heard of "cookie cutter" fish, meaning, that every fish is identical, but what you are about to see is borders on ridiculous:

Fish#1, I knew I was going to need my scale!  Conservatively estimating the weight of this fish over 5 lbs.                                                      

Fish#2 - a little smaller, but not a lot.  Pushed 5 lbs pretty hard.

Fish#3, Which, by the way, is likely the biggest largemouth I've ever caught and I've caught a LOT of largemouth.  This fish was an estimated 23+ inches.  My best guess, again on the conservative side, would be a light 7 lbs. This fish almost never got caught, one more jump and she would have been free.  I picked her up and the spinnerbait fell out of her lip! 

Fish #4 - again, this fish is over 5 lbs.  This, literally, had me wondering what the heck was happening!  The bass gods had aligned every bass planet perfectly.  Maybe the Mayans are right and the bass were being kind because they know this is the last year I'll be able to fish for them!

And then fish #5 decided it was her turn to eat! She was a spunky little 2.5 lb fish that rounded out the first 5 keepers, but we weren't quite done........

Fish #6, keeping in mind that these are only the "keeper" fish I was catching, was again well over 5 lbs!

I actually lost track of how many total fish I caught out of this pond today, but it was somewhere close to 50 fish and I only made one trip around it and didn't fish the north side too hard because of the wind. The first five fish would have made for a really solid tournament bag.  Throw in the kicker fish at the end, and my six keeper fish would have been over 30lbs!  Seriously stupid. 

I wasn't done.  I ran to another spot I had been wanting to fish.  When I got there, I discovered that the water level was really very low.  I know this is a problem in many locations, but the "Lake" was nearly empty.  I made a few throws, walked around a bit, and gave up.  One more place to try before the sun went down.

The last thing I did was go down to the Cedar River across from my house.  I wanted a smallie to cap the day.  I parked just off the hwy and climbed down the West bank under the bridge.  I had never fished here before, even though it is just a 1/4 mile from my driveway.  I tied on a jig and made a couple casts and BAM!  My line got smoked hard!  I fought the fish for about 10 seconds before it turned and broke my line.  I stood there dumbfounded. I thought, "well, that sucked, now what?" I decided to go back after the smallmouth with the spinnerbait that I had been using earlier.  Made a cast to the back side of the bridge piling......nothing.  Made a cast to the front side of the bridge piling...........FISH ON!  Here is the last fish I caught today, a chunky little small mouth that would have been my seventh keeper of the day!  As you can see, the chartreuse and white spinner bait is still in the smallies lip, just for proof.  It has a little something else that you might be able to distinguish, but not going to tell you what that is.  You can probably figure it out!  Can't wait for my next fishing adventure.  Probably won't be as exciting as the one I had today, but it will have it's own memories, I'm sure.

Remember to always get permission to fish the waters you would like to fish that are on private or semi-private land.  Whether its a small farm pond, a quarry or access to a larger lake that requires you to trek through private property, ASK.