Sunday, July 04, 2004

Bass anglings popularity brought about a dramatic increase of sportsmen on the lakes and streams taking advantage of a marvelous resource.

At first, many thought that surely all of these fast boats and rapid-fire professional fishermen would wipe out the populations of bass and perhaps other species. For a period of time, that did seem possible. But then those same folks who made headlines catching fish started a movement to safely release their fish back into the fishery.

Thus a new kind of conservation began. Here is my story of catch and release.

Fishing in a private pond, or more appropriately a small lake on the Durham Estate near Crofton, I practiced some catch and release.

During an afternoon simply made for bass fishing with light intermittent sprinkles of rain and low cloud cover, I could not pass the opportunity to try my luck. Sandy and Richard Durham, my hosts, had made the offer to fish, saying that a few people had had good luck fishing the clear water, grassy-banked impoundment.

Digging into past experiences and summoning information gleaned from talking with anglers who really knew how to fish a big pond, I studied the layout.

About twice and long as it was wide, it seemed that the dammed end of the lake would hold somewhat deeper water. If I recalled correctly, more than a few folks had advised me that in such situations you could look for big bass to be there recovering from the spawn and using the deeper water and steeper bank as an effective ambush area.

Sunlight fluctuating on the relatively calm surface would occasionally light up the bottom, perhaps 2 feet deep. On the shallow side, that meant that the strike zone could be as much as 10 to 12 feet from the edge. In such cases I am told that you should fish a 45-degree angle to either side while standing back from the edge as far as the length of your rod will allow to keep from spooking the fish.

I chose a willow leaf spinnerbait for my first lure so that its ability to be fished deep or shallow would give me a feel for the bottom and the presence of any structures. I ran the slow roll pattern, letting the lure sink to the bottom, then lift it to sink again under a slight tension on the line.

This makes the blade flutter on the fall and rise. No takers on this technique. I tried a fast and slow alternating mid-level retrieve and finally ran it shallow causing the blade to flutter just under the surface cutting a strong V shape wake. This woke up a three-quarter pound fat bass.

As the evening pressed closer I steadily worked my way toward the deep end, being careful to keep a low profile and to continually cast ahead. In the corner of the pond I was able to work the opposite bank because of the sharp angle of where side met end.

On the second cast I took a 12-inch bass but that dried up the hot spot.

An evening breeze rose around 7:30 and rippled the surface over the entire pound. This was good because the shimmering surface wouldnt betray a persons presence as much as calm water. As the light continued to fade and the only strike coming near the surface, I was prompted to switch lures and try a top water assault with a medium sized minnow-like lure called the Pop R. Good Move.

First cast, a nice 14-inch largemouth nailed the popper.

Now working the bank along the dam it was time to see if one technique on the chugging bait worked better than another. There are three typical ways to use a chugging or popping bait.

First a couple of distinctions; a popper has a smooth bowl-shaped lip perpendicular to the lateral plane of the lure. The eye for tying the line is fixed in the center of the contour.

When the lure is snapped forward, the cup-shaped lip forces a gout of water out in front of it and makes a blooping sound.

A chugger has a similar type lip but may have grooves to the side or the top of the lure that lets the water pass over, making a sound that is more chug-chug.

This also allows the lure to dart a foot or so beneath the surface and bounce back to the top. Both lure mimic the sounds of an injured baitfish, swimming frog or other creature struggling along the surface. The lures also simulate the sound of predators feeding at the surface of the water, which can act like a dinner bell for nearby fish.

One technique for the popper or actually any stickbait type lure, is to cast, then let the ripples settle from the splash-down before retrieving and then twitch the bait a couple of time.

Often this move alone will achieve the desired result. It seems to mock something edible falling into the water or the motion of a baitfish stunned and then twitching back to life.

Secondly, an aggressive popping action may work. With a tight line smartly snap the lure forward and let it pop the surface, alternating the timing between jerks.

This almost nearly matches the action of a lurching baitfish or feeding fish near the surface. Another trick is to do a halting retrieve using 6-inch long twitches of the rod tip to make the lure look like a crippled baitfish or a frog kicking and chugging across the surface.

This technique was the one that worked on this day. Six more times in fact, with the last fish a show stopper.

Casting 30 feet ahead and about 8 feet from the bank, I let the popper settle, twitched it and started the chugging retrieve. It was a third of the way back when a deep swirl churned the water right behind the lure. I thought to myself big fish, but fought down the urge to hope which sometimes causes an angler to over-anticipate and jerk a top water lure away from a striking fish.

I made a series of cast, each time working back closer to where the strike occurred and sure enough a gulping sound preceded the splash as the bait was sucked under and a tension came to the line. That time between the sight and sound of a strike on top water can be crucial. Bass can make a lot of noise and even knock the lure out of the water but never take it into their mouth, leaving you to set hooks in water and air.

This problem has plagued me for as long as I can remember but a good friend once said that if you cant feel it you cant catch it. That is true, but its also true that only practice can hone recognition of that microsecond that is the proper time to set the hook. This day it worked for me.

I was hooked to a significant fish.

It was a textbook battle, line stripping from a properly set drag, rod tip kept high, subtle pressure applied to turn the fish away from structures that would abrade and snap the line, pushing the blood pressure to about 200 over 200. I couldnt really say if it was seconds, minutes or hours but it finally let up and gave way to the line, easing to within lip landing distance of the steep bank. It was at a glance by far the biggest largemouth I had ever landed.

Not even unhooking the fish I raced the hundred yards to the hosts house to see if they had scales.

They did not, so I measured the fishs length and girth as best I could. Richard hefted the fish and guessed a couple of pounds heavier than I did. It felt good to hear but I really didnt know. There was a short debate between me the trophy hunter and myself the good sportsman.

The sportsman won and the fish started back to the pond with Richard and Sandy telling me I was certainly welcome to keep the fish. I thanked them and did the right thing.

Actually I couldnt tell by heft if the fish was bigger than 8 pounds, which is a personal standard for considering to keep a trophy fish. Ignorance can be costly.

I worked at reviving the bass by gently pulling it back and forth to aerate it gills. The bass made one attempt to right itself and turn side up just out of reach. As I watched, it continued to pump water over its gills but showed no sign of swimming away.

In a dying throe a fish can struggle about for several minutes and move across a pretty good sized area. If this happened I wanted to make sure I didnt waste the fish, so I jogged back to the house to get my rod and lure to snag it if that happened.

When I returned she (it was most likely a female at that size) was still there but breathing faster. I touched her nose with the rod tip and immediately she righted herself, swam a small circle reorienting and then darted away with a swirl.

Do you know how to determine the weight of a fish from measurements? I do now.

The bass was 25 inches long and 19 inches in girth. From much experience, actual measurements and weights, and credible speculation, biologists and anglers have worked out a formula that converts those inches into pounds for each species of fish.

The largemouth bass formula is length times length and then that product times the girth divided by 1200.

For the fish I released, that comes to 9.89 pounds.

Thats just a pennyweight under ten. Not one bass fisherman in a half million ever catches a nine-plus pound fish.

I did the numbers again and cursed the sportsman part of myself. Not satisfied, I went to the Internet to see if there were other formulas.

I found several, with a few differences. For example, in a co-op between Auburn and the University of Alabama they weighed and measured thousands of fish and developed a chart of length-to-weight ratios. That measure for my fish turned out to be the smallest weight I found.

The only judgment I had to make was whether the fishery was healthy or not. Unhealthy or overpopulated waters yield a fish that is long but not very thick. My fish was a pot bellied thick, strong and vigorous, so their estimate was 9.3 pounds.

I found three other sites with calculators that did the computation in a fill in the length and girth computer program. They estimated a healthy bass of those dimensions to be 11.28 pounds. I got sicker. The most often cited standard of estimated weight came back to the 9.89 pounds.

I am sure I did the right thing but I wish I knew someone who could make a mount from measurements.

If only I could remember the color of her eyes.  Daily News ·813 College St. ·PO Box 90012 ·Bowling Green, KY ·42102 ·270-781-1700