All of us fish bums have watched those guys on TV with varying takes on the sport....I'll admit, I've never seen it as a sport with any athleticism and I kinda always wondered how they get all the sponsors and why have all that promotion jazz busying up a perfectly good shirt. Well, I've got new respect for those guys and some answers and insight into the tackle industry.
People have been helping me learn and move forward with my search for Walleye fishing university but I just haven't taken the boat out that much as I realized that after a lifetime in a boat I was still kinda treating it like work, like I had to, like duty...and I don't like the tow out to the lake and well...what I'm liking is being at the local Bass lake at O dark thirty and walking the banks and learning the pursuit of Large Mouth Bass. So my first observation is that guy who stands up in the Ranger Boat for 8 hours straight and is a middle aged 240 pounder is a REALLY good caster . When you're throwing a Whopper Stopper that costs 12 bucks and trying to get it as close to the trees and stumps as you can accuracy is everything.
Here on our Lake the Bass are tight to the shore and under the heavy algae fields wherever they occur. My friend Dan told me in the heat of the summer that slow is the answer and he ain't wrong. Cast anything that floats real close to the shore and with a very slowly retrieve. My local expert 12 year old got me casting a shallow diving Rapala and using it as a top water by slowly retrieving ...the problem is those babies cost 10 buck's and I've salted a small fortune of them around the flora of the lake. This is typical of the shoreline, I find a place where I'm on a bit of a point and I cast parallel with the shore.....then I either catch a bass or lose 6 to 10 bucks.
I ask the 12 year old " how do you keep it out of the algae " ?.....he said " mister don't cast it into it " ? But the fish are under it...mmmm.....well, I went to guiding myself and remembered that when I was a kid and we skinny dipped in that same lake it was full of crawdads so I go to the store and get the right hooks to rig weedless like Stewart showed me at Lake Picatchos in Mexico and some Berkeley power bait crawdads and walla, they work but ol slimey would really rather have the hard bait balsa wood lure hand carved by a Norwegian women and put on the rack at your local store for 12 bucks.... how's that for a run on sentence ? Here's the line up, or whats left of it I should say. Left to right, Power Bait, Rapala, my last Bass Pro popper....mmmm... the one in the middle is the smallest, works the best and costs the most, ahhhh, America at work.
The other morning on my very first cast I caught a really nice Bass. I released him and inspected my line near the lure and my second cast went into a tree . Actually it hit the water but the line snagged a branch which made the lure elevate on the retrieve and the ol quick flip trick when it reached the wood of the branch firmly imbedded it for another 10 bucks.
So then you not only need to cast accurate straight and true but distance is maybe more important . In a case like the pic below I want the lure to land right next to those trees, as close as possible . My lure is what ever is left of the days arsenal and they all weigh differently and some are bigger or smaller and catch the wind easier or lesser and well....hello to the terra firma and another 10 bucks.
So the 12 year old tells me to cast a ' frog ' onto that algae you see. The frog is completely weedless and cost, you got it, 10 bucks. Well, I started with a Sebille brand , kind of a designer frog that was in my line up that I bought at a garage sale in Mexico...somebody payed 15 bucks for that baby. Once it was gone to an errant cast I replaced it with a Walmart varietal.....Man it really hurt me when that gorgeous Chug Bug disappeared.
And hooks....I know this is stupid but you don't catch nothin without hooks....and these Bass will test your grey natter to which plastic needs which hook.....am I confusing you ? There's straight shank, off set shank, weed springs, weighted ( different weights of course ) AND they all come in 15 different sizes.
So considering all those things it's no wonder that the middle aged 240 pounder ( white guy ) standing up for 8 hours casting ain't got no room on his shirt for anything else ! You've seen that guy on TV and he has 15 rods and reels laying on the floor of the boat that he spends the day trying not to step on....and I gotta say I got a few myself and you know why ? It's so at the end of your 8 hours there's at least one that still has a lure on it.
So every morning I do my part to help the economy of this sport I love so much. I watch the Osprey's make it look soooooo simple .
