The wrong plug for earliest topwater action, even though it's a favorite.
Since ponds usually open up later this month, I thought I would post an article about surface action after ice-out.
Ice-Out Largemouths on
the Surface
Here in New Jersey, the Delaware and
Raritan Canal was built and put into coal barge operation back about the same
time Woolrich went into business in the 1830s. Not big barges, mule boats got towed
along a path immediately beside the water. Today, the once clean edges of the
canal serve as the overgrown haunts of largemouth bass and pickerel. As a teen, I knew
of a barge basin alongside the canal near my house in the central region of the
state. For more than several years, every late February and early March as soon
as the ice had melted, I caught largemouths in this five or six-acre basin
pond.
Where I now live in northern New Jersey,
some ponds may be ice-free while ice fishermen still dare to go out on
northernmost Greenwood Lake, and possibly Lake Hopatcong. If you prefer to fish
open water or especially would like to on a mild day, perhaps after a
confining winter, ponds give you the early advantage of being fishable. They easily
warm when temperatures climb.
Ponds Warm Earliest and Fastest
Ponds and lakes with stained water warm
fast. But any pond will warm faster than a lake, unless a lake is very
shallow. I learned in my teens that largemouths can be caught on the surface as
early as late February in New Jersey. But what still amazes me today is that
the water temperature at which bass will take a plug from the surface is downright
cold.
For the only topwater technique I
know of that will work at 47 degrees, water of good clarity is best since the
method is so subtle. A big popper on a hot summer evening may call up bass from
six or seven feet down in turbid water, but the method I will disclose cannot do
that, certainly not as a popper can. But leave nothing to doubt: a big popper
will not work in 47 degree water unless it’s a freak exception I’ve never heard
of once happening. However, there is a way to catch largemouth on the surface
consistently at that temperature, although the right conditions—a calm, mild
evening after plenty of sun has warmed the shallows quickly—happen only a few
times at most, very early in the spring. During the first days of March, 1975,
my older mentor showed me how to do it.
How to Fish a Rebel Real Slow
“Rapalas are useless.” Joe had told
me. “Not only do they wiggle too tight and quick if you try to get the bass to
hit on a retrieve—as well as begin to rise very fast if you pause for a split
second—the main problem with them is subtler.” He dropped a 2 ½-inch Rebel
Minnow into the water at our feet.
He said, “Go ahead, get down near
water level and have a look.” The water in the basin was very clear, and I could
see that the Rebel floated with most of the body slightly submerged. It sat not
so deeply as it would by a 45-degree angle, but only the plastic of the head
area broke the surface.
“I’m going to twitch my rod tip very
lightly,” he said. I watched as the rear end of the plug lifted slightly and
the head barely dipped. Then Joe lifted the Rebel and cast it long with a whip
of the light tip of the rod.
“That’s all the action you need to
get them to hit on the surface now. Wait about 20 seconds, even longer, between
each twitch. By comparison, the balsa wood of a Rapala floats the plug high up
and evenly on the surface. It’s entirely ineffective.”
“So by barely twitching the tail up,
it takes forever to retrieve a single cast,” I said.
“Uh huh. But if you can’t stand it,
retrieve very slowly with jerks and short pauses every two or three seconds.
That sometimes does it, too. Especially gets the occasional pickerel.”
Where to Catch Early Largemouths
There were two areas of that basin
pond where we caught bass on the surface in March, and these structures turned
out to have been archetypal for bass fishing this time of year. The northeast
corner got the sun late in the afternoon. Situated very close to the pond’s
deepest 12 feet of water, we caught bass there in very cold weather and water
and through the ice during the winter. On calm evenings, after at least a
fairly mild day and lots of sun, we picked off two or three bass or more
from this corner with submerged branches. Some of these fish were nice, better
than two pounds. They simply took to the nearest, warmest shallows with some
cover from a deep retreat.
The southern end of the pond featured a
shallow flat. After several mild days, we took quite a few bass on the Rebel
from just about anywhere of about half an acre of one to three feet of water.
The bass never arrived there until water temperatures of about 50 degrees and more established in the afternoons and evenings of a couple or a few days.
This fishing represented a set of two patterns we
relied on for four years of fishing the basin together. We spoke eagerly each
spring anticipating “the bass moving up on the flat.” Either “back in the
corner” or on the flat, we caught bass on the surface with the Rebel.
And since the 1970s, I’ve repeated the
same general pattern fishing other waters. The earliest warming water, which
may be six or seven degrees colder or more the next day with the sort of
weather change to expect in March, leads bass to the closest shallows they can
access. It’s as though they register that they’ll only be in shallows for a single evening
before returning to the depths, so they take to the closest warmed water to them. They wait at least for the second day
of warming water before invading a flat, which is both at a further distance
from the depths and an extensive area itself, requiring of the bass more motion
and burning of calories.
We noticed a
significant difference between the temperature of the warming water in the basin’s
corner when bass were present, and that of the flat when bass moved over
it en masse. Three degrees makes a difference. But not all of the bass in a
pond move into the ideal structure area on one of these first mild evenings
after colder weather. For one thing, that would be an awful lot of bass in one
corner of a pond. About 47 degrees is all that’s needed to draw at least some
of the bass into very shallow water and likely into more than one spot. Although
a northeast corner soaking up that southwestern sun should be the best spot,
bass will be elsewhere, too, and likely some in shallows on the feed. So long
as the lure cast to them is a floater/diver minnow type plug that allows the rear to be submerged, they may rise and take it with a dimple as subtle as a trout’s
taking a fly.
Major Movement into Shallows and Set-Backs
As soon as the water is going to hold
at about 50 degrees or better late in the day, a much larger number of bass
move into shallow water. If the pond has a shallow flat, find bass on it.
Likewise for lakes once they’ve warmed similarly, although structures,
particularly those that lead from deep water into shallow flats, may be more
complicated and interesting.
Impoundments have creek channels.
Large impoundments have many channels which lead back individually into shallow
coves, while very small impoundments have only one. In some lakes, very subtle
channels—ditches—run between shore and the main channel leading back into a cove. Sometimes such ditches can be sighted on the shoreline where they
enter the water. Bass use channels and ditches when available to lead them onto
flats. It’s a good idea to learn where these structures are, and to fish them
closely. Bass will sometimes be reluctant to move out onto to a flat, and
remain staged in a channel. Particularly large bass use the edge of a channel or
scoop of a ditch as an ambush point. If you can find cover associated with a
channel or ditch, that’s better. If the water has good clarity and is six feet
deep or fewer, calm and warmed, the surface approach with a low sitting
floater/diver may be the best device to coax a lunker to rise and slurp that
plug down.
Lakes and impoundments often have a
structure which combines the two archetypes of shallows with immediate deep
water access, and an extensive flat: shallow humps, which may be the best spots you
can fish, particularly in larger reservoirs where bass winter in water as deep
as 40 feet or more well away from shore. If a wintering area is near a hump
with a fairly broad shallow area on top of it, excellent fishing may be had.
In any case, if the water temperature
is falling, the best approach may be live bait—shiners. Getting bass to strike lures is of course not impossible in very cold water with dropping
temperature. But we’re in awe of nature in part because of its order, and it’s as
certain as any immutable law that no bass will take a plug on the surface in
extremely cold water. There’s a world of difference between 40 and 47 degrees.
It is true that by evening after a mild day, right about sunset and shortly
thereafter, the water temperature may have already begun to slip. But on
beautiful days that have quickly brought that surface temperature into the
upper 40's without too sharp a dip of the air temperature at sunset, the fact of
warmed shallows keeps the bass in them until the effect sharply reverses.
Fishing lakes and impoundments is, at
least in one respect, easier than fishing ponds: on board a nice boat the
electronics tell you a lot.
Topographic maps are much easier to find for large waters, too. However,
locating the deepest water of a pond isn’t difficult. Tie on a half-ounce
jig, cast it, count off its descent. It will drop at about two feet per second.
This may result in approximate measures, but you can certainly find the deepest
water by the longest count.
As earlier mentioned, it’s always
possible that pond bass will move out of the pond’s deepest water and into two
or more adjacent shallow areas on one of these mild evenings. Check a number of
areas, even shallows not so likely to produce, so long as you have time. But fish
the floater/diver with great patience. It’s not easy. Inevitably some bass are going to be caught on the retrieve. It may
just be too tedious to always retrieve the plug by barely moving it all the way
back for the next cast. Either way, remember that this is ice-out. Keep it
slow.
Ice Out Considered as Pre-Spawn
We usually do not think of ice-out as
the pre-spawn period. Water temperatures are still a long way from the upper
60's of spawning time. Here in North Jersey bass don’t spawn until about early
May, if that. Pre-spawn time is thought to be April, but the eggs in females
have begun to grow by ice-out, and these bass need energy to grow them to size
within a couple months or so. It’s possible that bass, particularly females
which account for the lunkers, are particularly motivated to feed as soon as
the water reaches into the 40's just after ice-out in order to compensate for the
added metabolic demand of their egg mass. There may be a hormonal response in
the females that drives them to feed more since eggs require more calories to
produce than sperm requires of males.
Although bass have a cold-blooded
metabolism, metabolism and temperature are not an absolute regulator of
activity as such. Hormones may increase feeding activity very early in the
spring relative to less feeding activity in the late fall with the same water
temperature. Fishery research has established that while bass store energy as
fat rather than protein when water temperatures drop in the fall, no
evidence exists that this is to protect against the cold of winter. Since bass are cold blooded, that doesn't matter, and neither do they hibernate, nor
cease altogether to feed under ice, as ice fishermen know well. Rather, this
shift to fat from protein somehow correlates with slowing metabolism;
bass do not go on a fall feed in order to fatten up for winter as if they need it in lieu of feeding. Nor have I
caught bass on the surface at 47 degrees in the fall, not even on a mild, sunny
day with rising water temperature.
Besides, regarding metabolism as not being
the only determinant of feeding activity, it’s obvious that bass feed for other
reasons than what the water temperature is. The approach of a low pressure
system stimulates feeding activity, for example. Conversely, other conditions
put them off the feed. It’s also true that in waters rich with forage, bass
grow faster and bigger because they feed opportunistically.
Whatever the case may really be, ice-out is a
significant time of awakening after a stable freeze. The days usually remain cold
with little sign of spring becoming visible in early March, but even a single
mild, sunny day can critically change the bass environment in the favor of an
angler who may otherwise just be glad to get out of the house. Very good
catches can be made, and possibly some of the year’s largest. But the Rebel and
other plastic floater/divers available on the market may not be the final word
on this surface technique.
Plug Modification
I have never bothered to experiment
with modifying plugs to see if I can increase the effectiveness of this cold
water angle. The Rebel straight out of the box seems perfect enough, but I
don’t really know if a touch up may do one better. It would seem as if the
obvious candidate for modification would be the banished Rapala—some weight
placed on the rear treble. Surely an angle of the plug’s rear to surface as steep
as 45 degrees could be achieved with
enough buoyancy remaining in the plug overall. Whether or not the right
rear-lift action would remain, I doubt. But for those who love to invest time
in tinkering and experiment, I would have to agree that plug modification for
ice-out largemouths seems an interesting endeavor.
