When Bass Speak, Do You Listen?

Have you ever had one of those days when the fishing is super slow and bass are barely cooperating then poof …

Something weird happens and a bass strikes when they shouldn’t?

I know I have like one time when burning a jig n pig from the edge of a lay-down and a nice 3 pound+ largemouth comes up and hammers it.

OK, so you say anything can happen once, but when it happened two more times within the next few minutes I decided the bass were really trying to say something to me.

After working a bank with several lay-downs for most of the morning but only catching an occasional keeper bass, this sudden change of action caused me to stop and re-think my game plan.

How did I react?

By stowing the pitching stick and picking up one of my spinnerbait rods, I started re-working each of the trees with the spinnerbait using a waking retrieve.

An hour later, I had caught and released seven additional bass ranging from two to four pounds. Even better…

Many of the bass were busting the bait on the surface with far more impressive strikes then I ever got pitching jigs.

Now that is really cool!

Not only did the change result in catching several nice bass but with much more explosive strikes!

A few weeks later, I was fishing another pond absolutely loaded with aquatic vegetation (pond weed, lily pads, coontail). My partner and I started the day working both the deep and shallow weed-lines with Texas-rigged worms.

Even though this pond tends to deliver great numbers of bass, this was definitely another one of the slower days where the “bass fishing” was definitely better than the “bass catching”.

The wind was blowing better than 15 mph from the south, so we continued working in and out of the various coves to conserve battery power. As we came down along a weed-line at the southern end of one cove and rounded the corner into the wind, I turned and made a cast into directly into an even bigger wind gust.

You probably guessed what happened then …

I was instantly rewarded with a pretty nasty backlash on my bait-casting rig.
After picking at the mess (and muttering) for a few minutes, I finally got the backlash out and started retrieving the line. Just as the line started to draw taunt, I noticed it was moving sideways and quickly set the hook into a nice fish.

Once the bass was landed and released, I sent another cast in the direction of the wind and poof … another backlash. (You would think … “Once bitten; twice shy” right!)

Again I picked at the snarl (while muttering even louder this time with a few choice words thrown in) and retrieved the line once the bird’s nest was cleared. This time when when the line tightened I found another bass had picked up the worm running out towards and under the boat.

Looking at my fishing partner we decided the bass were telling us to make two changes by the way those two fish had reacted to the worm sitting dead on the bottom.

One … Put away our bait-casters and pick-up spinning outfits and then to change the retrieve from a slow, bottom-bouncing presentation dead-stick the worms.

For the rest of the day, our newly informed efforts were rewarded with bass catching rather than just the bass fishing we experienced that morning.

See it does pay to stop and listen when the bass are talking (as long as you understand what they’re saying that is  )!

Tight lines and full live-wells …