Bass Lessons

30 bass in less than 3 hours. Sound like fun? or more like a summer dream? It became a reality for a friend and me. Recently, I was able to join up with a long-time friend and outdoor writer Mike Roux for an evening on an Illinois private lake. 

Mike texted me on a whim to ask me if I was up for an evening fishing trip the next day. I quickly texted back, "Yes, absolutely!" He picked me up around six, and we headed toward a private lake that we had fished in past. 

The plan was to fish til dark. Our usual route was to troll the lake in a clockwise fashion. Mike and I usually create a little competition to add a little spice to our outings. This night I decided that we would compete for the first fish, the biggest fish, and the most fish. What I didn't know at the time is that we would have a hard time keeping track of all the fish! 

This evening was a classic example of how the fishing dynamics change over the course of a couple hours. We carried three poles with three different lures to meet the challenges we might face throughout the evening. It was only a couple casts before we caught our first fish using a crankbait. For the next half hour, we both caught a half dozen fish. 

As we moved into a bit of shade from the saplings lining the water's edge, we began to use a wacky worm against the bank. Mike caught his first three-pound bass of the night. He put me on to Stike King's "Sweet Tater Pie" a couple of years ago and it did not disappoint once again. Over the next forty-five minutes, we caught another half dozen bass. They ranged in size but all were in the pound to two-pound range. We both had caught seven basses apiece when the evening began to get interesting as the sun began to set.

Mike decided first to switch to a topwater spinner bait. His go-to is a Moto lure that he has caught some monsters with. I was still working the wacky worm with not a lot of success when it happened. Mike got blown up by a nice three-and-a-half-pounder. Then another bass and then another. It was every cast for the next forty-five minutes. The bass were so active that we were losing track of how many we had caught individually and together. We both decided that we would stop at thirty, simply because we were not equipped to fish in the dark. It did not take very long to hit thirty. With one last cast, I pulled in a three-pounder and we called a fantastic evening! 

The takeaway is to fish changes that are occurring throughout the fishing trip. In this case, we were fishing for bass. We went from a crankbait to the wacky worm. When they stop hitting the worm, we moved to a spinnerbait on the top. This proved to be the correct formula on this summer night.