Weightless Plastic Worm for 4 1/2 pound Largemouth Bass

This bass hadn't spawned yet, unless it had devoured a big lunch--19 1/2 inches, over 4 1/2 pounds, third cast with the Chompers. I use an inset hook at Mount Hope Pond, since the abundance of cover means getting snagged otherwise. Also caught a two-pounder.

Got there about 11:30 and left an hour later just before the deluge. Guess my little romance with Mount Hope and Round Valley begins now. From May 8th last year, I had 16 consecutive outings without getting skunked. Each outing is recorded in a handwritten log that uses shorthand symbols. I can dip into memory of outings from 1974. The shorthand encapsulates what comes alive. The margin for notes helps, too.

No weight for the Chompers, just a barrel swivel to connect 15-pound fluorocarbon to 15-pound Power Pro. I use six-pound test at Round Valley. The Chompers sinks slower than Senko-type worms.

Sunset Largemouth Bass on Spinnerbait

Think they're spawning, but in this pond the bottom is so silted it's a wonder they can. Missed a lot of short hits from bass in close. One jumped off. Caught a couple of two-pounders or close to it, a 2 1/2, and another just over a pound. Another sunset foray at the neighborhood pond. One of those hits created a tremendous boil, sort of like a hippopotamus shaking a bug off its back, but a bass doesn't have to be five pounds to do that.

Nice to get outside and especially to feel the thrills of missed fish and one of them leaping free. You never intentionally lose a fish, but when they foil you, it raises interest even with the pangs of loss.

Largemouth Bass: Warming Waters

I had fished bass at the Round Valley Pond a couple of times during the week. It was 53 degrees and raining on Monday. Something picked up the Chompers and ran fast, dropping it after it felt some tension on the line from my side, but it could have been a big bluegill and that was my impression, just don't have the certainty of recognition from the usual tip-tapping. Friday was in the 60's and still no action in the shallows. Once the 70's are really established, I'm certain bass fishing will be good. I avoid the nesting bucks and fish the outside edges for the lurking females. I fished deep with the Chompers and mini-King spinnerbait with the chill, nothing. A couple of small brown trout spun around the worm when I zipped it in for another cast while just checking the reservoir. I casted the mini-King and they weren't attracted to that at all.

My neighborhood pond is shallow and warms very fast. I couldn't tell if some bucks were guarding beds or not, but tend to doubt that with temperatures way down in the 40's last night. Water's murky. The 17-incher I caught was fat as a log. Also caught two about two pounds apiece, and two about a pound apiece. Sun was down and the mini-King had done it's attractions in 20 minutes or so. That's why I like to go to other places. It takes me two minutes to walk to this pond about the same length of time to catch five bass!

Tilcon Lake Stephens State Park Largemouth Bass and Pickerel

 Wishbone contrails reflected on the lake. I had hoped to hook a lunker, of course. Second time I've fished Tilcon Lake, Stephens State Park. the first time we fished Senko-type worms without a hit. This time I brought along half-a-dozen shiners, since I imagined the water would still be chilly, especially early in the morning. Once a quarry pit, this lake is deep. Had about 45 minutes to fish, catching a bass and two pickerel.

Beautiful place. The mountains flanking the water make the scene. If it were flat land, it wouldn't feel the same. Quarry lakes exist in Indiana and each must be like an oasis. But the Highlands in my back yard always give my mood a vertical lift that flat land can't.

Round Valley Pond Bass Fishing Lost Nice One, Sighted Eared Grebe

Hooked my first plastic worm bass of the season, lost to a bad knot. Felt it. Really good size. Hit about seven feet deep along the less weedy, sharply sloping shoreline. Had little time to fish and when I blew that, felt sure that's all I'd connect with. Water's pretty chilly, not over 60 I'm sure, and sunshine abundantly saturated very clear water.

Felt really good to be out fishing for bass again. So it begins and each new season I anticipate a really big one. Guess I'll never know how big is the bass I lost today, but it probably still has my seven-inch Chompers attached to its maw.

Eared grebe, not a common sight.



New Jersey Largemouth Bass Fast Pond Fishing

Hedden Park Lake is Good for Bass

                                                                                                                 

         Small waters like three-acre Hedden Park Lake may be deceiving since lakes, obviously, contain more fish by sheer volume. The by-word to describe ponds and small streams is “overlooked,” and this state of affairs is as eternal as death and taxes. Plenty of anglers graduate to expensive boats and famous lakes, never looking back, and looking away when they happen to drive past a pond or over a small bridge. But I think of Ernest Hemingway in Key West, pursuing marlin with manic persistence for periods lasting months—then suddenly needing to go fish from one of the many Keys bridges for snappers and grunts alone.

          Hedden County Park shadows Dover in Randolph Township a couple of turns off Route 46, but the best access to the pond is from the back of the park, directions easily accessed online. If you like the manicured ease of a county park, it’s a good place for young families or a picnic, but serious anglers have no need to feel out of place. Just focus on catching some of the many bass, and smile and wave if anyone takes interest when you do. It’s a place I have visited for no more than an hour at a time, but I once caught close to a dozen bass, gingerly unhooked and released.

          The truth about New Jersey largemouth bass fishing is that many ponds will yield more bass in less time than any other type of water. A private pond I have access to often yields about 10 bass—on average between a pound-and-a-half and two-and-a-half pounds—in a half hour’s fishing. I would get tired of any more.

          Ponds fish easier than lakes, which is why I fish lakes often. But I have a need to scale way back—bring a single rod and a single lure—and simply catch a fresh zing of pure action.

          Hedden Park Lake typically can produce bass any time of day. The dog day dictum against bass hitting in 95-degree afternoon heat may spare anglers who prefer an air conditioned room, but fish a weightless plastic worm like a slow-sinking Chompers or Culprit to prove opinion wrong. I don’t recommend fast-sinking Senkos except to get casting reach (they are heavier). You need to make the plastic seem very lazily lifelike. A Senko makes for the bottom fast by comparison to other plastics.

            I once walked to the edge of the pond shortly after noontime in a blaze of summer sun to see bass everywhere. The perfectly calm surface invited them to slowly cruise inches to a foot deep in full view. This happens in ponds frequently. Pay attention and you may discover that the bass are interested in the damselflies alighting on any vegetation or sticks that break the surface. I once directly watched a bass score. An amazing sight, the bass leapt in front of me, mouth wide, engulfed a damselfly and dove under.

          Sight fishing with plastic worms of four to seven-inches will occupy you with complicated moves. To try and get these stubborn, heat-phased bass to take the worm is not as simple as just casting to those you see. It’s better than a screen game because you really do slip into what you are—a mortal being requiring food. That the bass is released doesn’t matter. The experience of being part of reality involving relations does. This makes you feel at home in the world just by fishing. Releasing the bass makes you master because you are not bound to the need to actually take it as prey, although on seldom occasion I take a walleye or trout home from elsewhere in place of what my wife would have purchased at Shop Rite.

          Speaking of trout, Jackson Creek flowing from pure springs and feeding Hedden Park Lake has wild brown trout.        

Round Valley Reservoir Smallmouth Bass on the Rocks

 

Round Valley Reservoir Smallmouth Bass on the Rocks 

          Last summer, Fred Matero and I caught a lot of smallmouth bass and one largemouth at Round Valley Reservoir, thanks to Fred’s 14-foot deep V-hull boat. I'm posting this story well ahead of time. For any who read it now, get psyched. It's a chilly day today, but gladly a long winter is gone that didn't even allow us much ice fishing.

           In recent years, I have not managed to catch any bass after Memorial Day from shore, and abandon the reservoir until late April. But Fred catches plenty through the summer. The place to be is the back shorelines; find rocky bottom in about 10 to 15 feet of water and you may be in for some action. Ancillary aquatic vegetation ensures that largemouth may be present too.                  

          Fishing such structure seems deceptively easy. On occasion, I sight-fish largemouth bass in shallows. Simply casting a plastic worm to the bass usually isn’t enough. Years of trial and error have taught me how to anticipate where to place the worm. Nevertheless, failure to get a hit is the rule, although I try to trim the margin of error. So when fishing for bass you can’t see, the inference is that most of the time they ignore an offering near them, but subtle attention to presenting a lure may make the difference. Sight is not your only sense and sometimes it seems that hunches lead the way, whether they are feelings about where to cast or how to retrieve. Persistent pays, but the kind of persistence that pays best is attentive.

         That recent evening on Round Valley, Fred was successful with eighth-ounce jigs tipped with quartered nightcrawlers. Enthusiastic about the huge sunfish that sometimes frequent strips of shoreline in pods, he is prepared. Both smallmouth and largemouth bass eagerly take the bait, the jig tapping rocks lightly, emitting sound that gamefish register perhaps and are drawn to. Always allow the jig to make bottom contact in any case. Few lures get lost to snags here because the rocks are small without edges for a hook to wedge against, but on occasion it happens, and simply using the electric to back behind the hang up usually allows you to pull the lure free. The mistake beginners often make with any type of lure is to just cast it out and retrieve it back. In most fishing situations, the lure should be fished on or near bottom.

          Obviously, topwater plugs offer bass a chance to dramatically break this rule. After sunset, we moved closer to the bank, and caught bass in water as shallow as five or six feet. Coming upon reeds standing in shallow water, my senses became aroused, I reached for a Hedden Torpedo topwater, and suggested to Fred we close in. No sooner had I spoken, a great, audible gush of water belied a big bass devouring forage right up in those reeds.

          No matter that the plugs failed us, or we failed the plugs. Fishing is opportunity, and usually you have to try something else. Dusk set in and we continued to fish as dark enclosed us, making for the ramp under a nearly full moon and stars.

          Nevertheless, the Torpedo is my favorite plug, period. And for over a year I have used only a Torpedo with complete chrome finish because no other color or pattern of colors makes a better lure. This is only personal preference, but go with what gives you confident because only confidence arouses those senses you need.

           Most of the outing, I casted a Senko-type worm, the 10 and 12 foot depths just right for that fast sinking action, in fact a higher vibration pitch is emitted by more mass to possibly arouse bass at some distance in the gin clear Round Valley water. I hoped that with any large bass present, they would go for this chunky offer of a five-inch, fat-bodied plastic that smells good to them.

          Round Valley is full of good-size bass between two and three pounds, and although ours were smaller, Fred lost a smallmouth that may have been two pounds. I have spoken to two separate scuba divers who have spoken of huge bass. Also, I spoke to an angler who told me about a largemouth he estimated at nine pounds, which wouldn’t hit. The state record smallmouth bass, seven pounds, two ounces, got caught here, but the potential for larger seems to exist despite the reservoir’s notorious low fertility, which explains the gin clarity, very desirable otherwise. Bass are numerous, but not everywhere, even though fishing pressure on them isn’t very high and most release their catches. Despite a certain lack of forage, the ecology seems to trade numbers of bass for size.     

       Your outing should be contemplative if you want to catch fish. Openness of mind is what allows attention scope, but fishing is a game, so every cast counts to score.