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"Familiarity breeds contempt" - is that right? Am
I remembering that old adage correctly, what with my fucking
world-weary mind? Well, if so, I have to agree - mostly. Walking down
the same path over and over and over again can get pretty damn boring -
there are just no new sights to see, scents to smell, textures and
flavors and wavelengths to taste and touch and hear. In neurological
terms, phasic receptors dull at the non-stimulus of a continually
repeated scene. Those receptors just get used to it, which results in
stasis, stagnation, shit, depression. Let's extend the idea:
familiarity kills.
And so them thar black basses, them
spots, biggies, and smallies, have become a bit too familiar to me, a
bit too rote - the novelty's died. Have nailed too many bass too many
times during pre-spawn when they're staging just outside spawning
areas, you know, the cuts, corners, and drop-offs adjacent to flats,
flats with sand-grained substrate and smothered in wood and brush and
boulders. Have hooked infinity post-spawn fish in similar areas during
late spring and early summer. Have had the ol' plastic worm sucked in
excessively when worked in macrophyte pockets in both ponds and
slow-flowing streams during the bountiful buffet of summertime. Have
socked it to those autumn-transition micropterids looking to get a
quick last meal in the form of a crankbait or spoon before winter's
lethargy finally hits home. And those winter bass - they too have
little spark left with which to fire my engine. I effortlessly tempted
plump smallies of Arrowhead to munch small tube jigs down deep during
late winter; on a cold, blustery January day at Silverwood Reservoir,
my achingly slow plastic worm did the job on Mr. Bigmouth; and
Berryessa's spots, smallies, and biggies had no problem slurping my
quiver of plastic lures during the calm, crisp December quiet.
Since novelty, the unknown, is such an important driver of why I
fish, the point of bass fishing has simply dissipated - it's gone. The
colors have faded, the embers have burned out into cold, grey ashes.
Few reasons exist for why I should fish for bass. But like all
relationships that've run their course, I feel I gotta condense and
process and divulge and crystallize explicitly my knowledge of and
connection to the spots and smallies and largies to really resolve and
complete the relationship. So as the calendar year from January to
December mirrors the cycle of a lifetime from birth to death, from the
first kiss to the signing of divorce papers, here's the basses and I
through the seasons.
WINTER
Though quirks unique to the three main
bass species exist when the thermometer's at its minimum in lentic
waters - for example, spots are more likely both to suspend and to
occasionally venture shallower provided the weather's been stable -
they all really behave pretty damn similar. Primarily, all three basses
inhabit deeper water during winter. Don't believe me, knucklehead?
Well, dig the fact that both
spotted and largemouth bass dropped to deeper waters during January and
February in an Alabaman reservoir, with the spots generally seven feet
below the bigmouths (Hunter and Maceina 2008). Smallmouths in a
gravel-pit lake moved to the deepest water available during late autumn
and stayed there in winter, apparently cued by both falling water
temperatures and macrophyte senescence (Savitz et al. 1993). Likewise,
smallies in a Texan reservoir held in deeper water in winter than
either adjoining season (Kraai et al. 1991). Mr. Bigmouth in a lake in
Canada slid to deeper water toward the tail end of autumn through
winter (Hanson et al. 2007); similarly, though at a much more southerly
latitude, the same critter exhibited a nearly identical pattern in a
California reservoir (Fast 1993).
What determines
how deep, however, is unknown. Frankly, no one, neither them scientist
types nor them tackle-manufacturer-sponsored bass pros, has tried to
answer why bass are at specific
depths during winter. While I lack a statistically significant,
highfalutin, academic answer, I've a sneaking suspicion of what
determines bass depth in winter: light. Related to light's effects is
the fact that bass are warm-water fish - metabolically, they simply
can't perform the wild, chase-down-baitfish antics that your
run-of-the-mill trout or salmon species can during winter's chill. Cold
water makes bass lethargic, makes it laborious for 'em to really move
around a whole bunch. Consequently, bass're vulnerable, and when
animals are vulnerable, they want safety. Security. A place where
things are predictable, where conditions won't be changing at the drop
of a hat, the drop of a jig, or, most relevantly, the drop of a lot of
rain or freezing-ass air.
So at what depth,
muhfugga, will them bass find that security they crave so desperately
during winter? It's somewhere in deep water, true, but specifically in
deep water where the light gets really fucking low.
Well, why where the light's dim? Because where that light lowers is
where the sun's influence - in other words, the temperature effects of
sunlight - becomes negligible. While Momma Nature has the ability to
give up several days of summer-like weather that'll warm up the surface
of a reservoir a few degrees, which Mr. Bass would no doubt like, she
has the same ability to dump a cold front down and cool that already
cold water down a few notches, which Mr. Bass absolutely won't like.
Additionally, bass don't want to be so low that they're in darkness
because, while they may be moving like molasses, they're still moving
and need to eat, and bass locate and capture prey primarily via sight.
Consequently, if you use the ol' white-lure-disappearing trick - you
know, drop a white lure down until you can't see it any longer, then
multiply that depth by three to get the depth at which light reaches
about one-percent surface illumination - you'll find that, in most
cases during winter in your average California water-supply reservoir
or lake, you'll be around 30 feet, plus or minus five feet or so.
But
there's more to it than just getting the depth right, although reading
the other conditions correctly stems from the idea that bass want
security. So we've bass at a depth where they're pretty immune to
temperature swings and yet have enough light to find prey; however,
them bass still feel like sitting ducks if they're in the open, even
though you may think they've nothing to fear in that deep water (they
do - I've watched river otters munch bass profusely during winter at
Berryessa). Now just about any good basser knows that bass like cover -
this holds doubly true in winter when bass are lethargic and thus
likely have a tough time swimming fast enough to escape a predator
(especially a warm-blooded one). What kind of cover? Rock, baby, BIG
fucking rock, big wood, BIG fucking wood, and lots of it, motherfucker.
But that's not all.
Even if you've found a mondo amount of rock down around that
one-percent light level, you still may not have found a really stable
place where those bass feel comfortable enough to sit and stay. If your
luscious rockpile sits in the middle of a lake that gets a rippin'
wind, yeah, you'll pull a fish or two off that rock, but that'll be
about it. Simply, that lovely cover in open water is too exposed, so
much so that a really gnarly gale can generate strong enough surface
currents that create return currents down near the bottom - that bottom
where your beautiful shale and granite and sandstone sit all prickly
'n' shit. And having to move to stay in position is something a
wintertime bass simply reviles.
So go do the smart thing and find a bunch of
rock or wood down deep where the light's low that's also protected from
flowing water. A cove, away from any feeder streams that might really
be running with wintertime rains, is a fine place to start.
So, you big, smelly, lazy fuck, finding wintertime bass is really just
a three-variable equation: low-light depth + cover + protection from
flow = bass. And that, you can believe me, is easily the biggest piece
of the puzzle to master. The final part, that final yard, as they say
in the gay football world, is having the right lure on at the right
time to get them to munch it.
And this is the
part where all those other fishing "writers" blow their time, mainly in
a vain effort to shove as many tackle-company names and products into
their narrative so that they can get their hands on the fucking ad
money. It's understandable, if unforgivable. Take, for example, In
Fisherman. While the information In Fisherman posits in their books is
often sound, even if partially recycled, the verbiage infesting their
magazine articles reads more like fucking multi-company fishing-tackle
ads than articles about understanding, pursuing, and catching a given
fish species. I can't tell you how many times they've basically stated,
in myriad ways, that you have to own tons of lures to catch fish
consistently within the pages of their mag. Never mind that they never
mention that adding that many lures to an arsenal actually adds that
many more variables to the equation, obscuring relationships among
environments and fish catchability. Never mind that owning so many
fucking lures in the first place serves as a crutch for not learning
how to use a smaller selection of lures in a wider variety of ways and
circumstances. Never mind that having so many fucking lures is
inefficient and plain cumbersome to a shore-bound guy, rendering much
of their text worthless for the average bankie. Never mind that the
more lures you possess, the more time you spend picking through 'em and
tying knots rather than using that time more effectively by reading the
water and conditions and actually having a line in the fucking water.
Now I refuse to name brands and to list a litany of lures because,
quite simply, it really doesn't make much of a fucking difference. I'm
only going to inculcate in your ass lures that (1) match the fucking
forage of wintertime bass and (2) are appropriate to the habitat type
and the metabolism of them freezin'-cold biggies and smallies and
spotties. Now unfortunately, the scientific literature yields very
little information on bass diets during winter, so basically all the
forage stuff I'm tossing out for you derives from my own experience.
That said, I've killed a fair number of winter bass, and,
overwhelmingly, the foods in their tum-tums all had one thing in common
- they were all benthic. Crawdads. Sculpins. Damselfly naiads. Shit,
even midge pupae. Additionally, all these buggers blend in well with
the bottom and either move very slowly and steadily or dart quickly and
then stop. Also note that two prey items were insects - they're not
very big. Finally, bass frequently contained a combination of these
foods in 'em, so they weren't feeding selectively. Consequently, when
you choose a lure it should do and be these things - match the bottom
color, be moved slowly and darted and stopped, is relatively small, and
stays on the bottom. Really, you only have two choices -
natural-colored (e.g., smoke) plastic worms or jigs. Tie on a certain
style of jig or worm you have confidence in, fish it slowly, and if
it's a natural color and is pretty small (e.g., three- or four-inch
plastic worms) and you put it in the right place, I have zero doubt
that you're gonna get you a wintertime bass.
SPRING
Bloomin' wildflowers, green-grass
hillsides, T-shirts, flip-flops, and the genesis of the brutal allergy
season for yours truly - spring. And man, does most everything desire
to fuck, with all three bass species poppin' boners and wettin'
hoo-hahs. The species spawn in sequence - smallies first, spots second,
then biggies. For a low-elevation waterway such as Berryessa, the
typical spawning peaks are early April, late April, and mid-May,
respectively. A couple hundred miles to the south and 5,000 feet higher
in Lake Arrowhead, spawning peaks are shifted later and compressed:
smallies are bonin' most in late May, and biggies really get their
groove on in mid-June.
Like your average basser, I keep my nose
exquisitely tuned to the main spawning peaks but for a completely
opposite reason: I want to not fish when the proportion of bass on beds
is greatest. I mean, fuck, man, as long as you don't spook 'em, you can
get a nesting bass to eat a goddamn empty Budweiser can or a
spade-shaped shovel head or a crescent wrench - it's just bitch
fishing, it's for clueless fucks that can't hack a little challenge.
Too, fishing bedding bass is akin to clubbing a dude with a truncheon
while he's bonin' his babe, or, in the case of hens holding just
outside the beds, smackin' 'em upside the noggin just as they're
doffing their dresses to hump. It's, well, just fucked up. It's none
too wise from a conservation perspective, either. Shoving hooks into
bedding bass can jack populations by reducing the ability of the male
to keep the eggs aerated, by harming the male's ability to fend off
egg/fry predators such as bluegill (Cooke and Suski 2005), and by
simple nest abandonment after capture. Fucked up.
So I focus my spring bass-prowlin' on either
side of the spawning peaks. Like a good scientist, I note both absolute
temperatures and temperature trends to time my spring bassin'. For
smallies, I'm in full-on pre-spawn mode as soon as the water temp hits
54°F until it reaches about 60°F, the latter of which roughly
corresponds to spawning commencement in the literature (Graham and Orth
1986). Temperature ranges for spots are similar, although I won't get
leery about hitting bedders until the water's 'bout 61, 62°F; these
numbers correspond to when spots are shallowest and thus most likely on
beds. Fifty-six°F has been THE key seductive, suggestive voice
announcing pre-spawn biggie movements, and I'm comfortable pursuing
bigmouthers until the mid-60s, after which I usually abandon for a
month or so whatever waterway I've been working to let the bass do
their thang.
But no matter how judiciously a stud may
try to avoid the spawning times, waterways with more than one
micropterid will host periods where one'll be fair game while the other
species is busy grindin' and thus off limits. To actualize some ethics,
I avoid spawning habitat as if it's a dirty fuckin' 7-11 hooker. And
features defining spawning habitat? Flat bottom. Protected from wind
and water flow. Fairly coarse-grained but still-cohesive substrate.
Often, especially for smallies, on sun-soaked northern banks (Savitz et
al. 1993). In short, where bass only have to do the absolute minimum to
carve out their beds and keep 'em clean. I hook my lure to the keeper
and just stroll on by the back ends of south-facing, sand-bottomed,
wood/rock-studded, narrow reservoir coves that were once braided
creeks.
The pre-spawn/post-spawn habitat, however,
totally has the green light. And man, points with cover just outside
spawning bays are the most ridiculous for bass, especially smallies and
biggies, although nearly any cover - a boulder, a log - in water
shallower than wintertime depths can house a good fish or two. Now the
"point" need not be the typical finger of land sticking out further
into the water than adjacent banks - it only needs to function like a
point. For example, islands can be thought of points that just come up
vertically rather than horizontally. In Arrowhead during my youth,
docks and the shade they cast frequently held springtime fish.
Associated with inhabiting shallower water during spring, pre- and
post-spawn bass are frequently more abundant on less steeply sloped
points than during winter, although cold fronts during pre-spawn can
push bass down into deeper water (Graham and Orth 1986).
The beauty about spring is that bass are aggressive - pre-spawn fish
are beefing up for both the rigors of spawning and the spawning fast,
and post-spawn fish chow like mad to replace body mass lost during the
non-feeding fornicating. Food abundance, whether small sunfish or
crawdads or shad, is lower in spring than in summer or autumn, so bass
aren't very picky about lure color or wanting a specific imitation.
However, pre-spawn fish, by dint of inhabiting cooler water than
post-spawners, generally require slower presentations for consistent
success; the same plastic worms that bang winter bass also do fine
during pre-spawn, but tube jigs, which can be worked faster, are more
efficient. Once the water hits 60°F, I start busting out plugs and
crankin', mainly for spots and biggies since smallies are usually
bedding at those temperatures; nevertheless, the tube jig remains the
staple. The opposite occurs in the warmer post-spawn waters - I crank
up a storm and toss topwater, too, and rarely pull out a plastic lure
unless the fish are either being bombarded by bass fishermen or the
light is really bright.
SUMMER
Summer, ah, California summer, all hot
and sweaty and yellow and achingly bright and brutal. Similarly, the
hellish heat of summer is the most difficult time of the year to catch
good bass consistently. Part of it is that fucking micro-bass are like
the plague, attacking anything and everything they can put their
little, overactive mouths on and basically out-competing their parents
for your lures. Part of it is that adult bass, lazy in general already,
get even fucking lazier in summer when food is ridiculously abundant -
for example, stream-dwelling smallmouths in Missouri sauntered around
their little home range a fair amount but never ventured far from their
own one-block (er, boulder) neighborhood (Todd and Rabeni 1989). Hunter
and Maceina (2008) found largemouth movement rates highest in summer,
and Ahrenstorff et al. (2009) discovered that the more wood cover you
threw at 'em, the more they inhabited it. Thus summertime biggies are
more likely to find and call home any sexy log or weed patch and, with
the latter most abundant in summer, so appear more scattered than in
other seasons. End result? You gotta sift through more water to gain a
decent creel. Finally, with the huge food density, it seems that during
the day bass will opportunistically slurp big numbers of crawdads and
fish within a really short time window, rendering the typical dawn/dusk
bites more erratic.
Still, several reliable patterns
persist through the tremendous variability summer throws a bass
hunter's way.
Man, Putah Creek when I first moved to Davis in
2002 was a sweet little quasi-wild waterway surrounded by a
human-crushed landscape. Rare was the occasion when I dropped down to
really accessible locations and saw another loathsome human.
Consequently, I never felt the need to constrain myself to certain
times to avoid humanity and so get that atavistic, primal rush when
chasing fish. Ten years later, however, the creek had blossomed into a
waterway's version of a goddamn mall - hordes, fucking HORDES, of
tackle-logo-festooned, bass-pro-aping, fucking thoughtless bass
automatons mirroring the stupid fucking bullshit they saw on television
shows. Despite the wretched bass-fisherman infestation the creek had
accrued, there was one saving grace - come nightfall, all the bass guys
would disappear, would vanish, would get slurped back into the
technology-dominated, human-structured pseudo-reality from which they
were manufactured. Conversely, that was just when I'd immerse myself in
the creek to bang some bass with the ol' buzzbait.
And bang 'em I did, although this pattern
- night bass on topwater - was not unique to lower Putah Creek. I did
the same damn thing in shallow, veg-laden waters when living in San
Diego ages ago - little Chamber's Pond spit up fat fuckin' biggies to
seven pounds, I nailed several nice largemouths in Rabbit Pond in the
cool darkness, and, shit, I even remember raising a few nice biggies in
Arrowhead with the buzz. Key, however, is when and where. With the
exception of channel catfish and lake trout, I really don't give a shit
about moon phase with one additional exception: summertime topwater
biggies. In the course of my nighttime adventures, of which there've
been many at this stage of the game, the brighter the moon, the more
the blow-ups. McMahon and Holanov (1995) actually backs up this
personal experience: their biggies saw and fed effectively at light
levels down to the full-moon level, below which feeding success trailed
off dramatically. That's the when - focus on full-moon nights if
desiring efficient topwater action. Converse to the usual cover-focused
casting during the day, nighttime buzzin' will bag biggies in areas
you'd never expect to get 'em in during the day - open water.
Apparently, biggies leave the confines of their veggy daytime lairs and
roam in open water under the cover of darkness, similar to what Todd
and Rabeni (1989) documented for smallies. The end result is that the
nighttime approach has to change from the daytime approach: you gotta
cover more water, and you gotta cover water you'd confidently ignore
during the day. Few lures are more suited to such conditions than the
Buzz given its effectiveness when reeled quickly, not to mention its
fucking obnoxious noise is easier to track for both bass and human at
night.
But most people, myself included, can only
indulge in so much nighttime huntin' before it harms their moods and
rhythms and sense of perspective. I liken it to a graveyard shift I
worked in my early 20s, which, had I continued in that soul-robbing
job, I'd've blasted my head off with a sawed-off 12-gauge or sizzled
some poor sucka with a gasoline water cannon and a Bic lighter. Thus
while generally more work than a midnight buzz walk - casts have to be
more precise, presentations have to be methodical, lure choice needs to
be more carefully contemplated - daytime's the major time when most
bassin' occurs. Thank the fuck Christ biggies and smallies and spotties
are primarily diurnal critters, with at least the former two especially
exhibiting activity peaks at dawn and dusk (Hanson et al. 2007, Demers
et al. 1996, Todd and Rabeni 1989). Nevertheless, even the mid-day, dog
days of summer can usually garner a bass with an achingly slow, slow,
fucking sloth-like retrieve.
Especially those fuckin' veg-point-lovin' biggies,
which are among the easiest summertime bass to lure. At Otay, down at
Putah Creek, in the Delta, in Arrowhead, fuck, man, even mildly sloped
banks in Berryessa that'd grow lush Eurasion milfoil, wherever a
waterway is ringed with macrophytes of some sort, the points, whether a
point into the veg (i.e., a corner) or a point out into water, so often
promise a nice biggie or two for a well-shook worm. Interestingly, no
studies I've run across have looked at bass abundance in relation to
nuances in macrophyte structure. However, one paper noted that biggies
associated with unique depths within habitats - in other words, a
depression or hump (Wheeler and Allen 2003). The points within a
macrophyte line are nearly always the result of such local depth
changes. Veg-point biggies seem to be more willing biters than their
brethren running in rock, probably because the cluttered macrophyte
world limits their visual detection range and thus compromises any
selective feeding. Similar behavior found in wood-dense lakes bolsters
this interpretation (Ahrenstorff et al. 2009). Regardless, the end
result is that a well-placed plastic worm or brush-guard-equipped jig -
and those are the most effective lures, in part due to their
weedlessness (although plugs can get 'em, especially during dusk) -
worked gently, with love and compassion, because bass still are fucking
lazy, will sooner or later find a big-mouthed fiend stuck to it.
But in California where the water-supply reservoir and its huge annual
water-elevation fluctuations rule the waterway world, veg is too often
too sparse and too thin and too rare to be even worth giving a
nanosecond glance. Still, no matter where they reside, black bass -
especially smallies and biggies - always relate to cover. In the
bathtub-ringed veg-lackin' reservoirs, this cover takes two forms: wood
and rock. But it ain't just any stick pokin' up out of the water
that'll draw a nice biggie; rare is the smallmouth that'll be found
hunting randomly over myriad rock sizes. In both cover types, bigger's
better. The nastier the wood, the larger the diameter the trunks, the
greater the chance a nice-sized largemouth'll be resident. It really
helps, too, if the wood is laying horizontally since, in that
orientation, bass can have low light nearly all day, a low light
similar to dawn and dusk when they're most active. Still-water smallies
want the biggest fuckin' boulders they can find, similar to their
habitat preference in streams (Todd and Rabeni 1989), although they'll
glom onto monster wood like biggies (Hubert and Lackey 1980).
Typically, the ideal areas, especially in mid-elevation Sierra
reservoirs where the major prey is signal crayfish (a crawdad that
doesn't burrow like red swamp crayfish), is the big-ass riprap covering
the dam faces - perfect hunting/resting habitat for smallies, and ideal
habitat for crawdads. Generally, however, the deeper wood/rock is
better than shallower cover since both species tend to inhabit greater
depths than in the adjacent seasons (Hunter and Maceina 2008, Kraai et
al. 1991). Given that the main foods in such snaggy situations are
crawdads and sunfish (Wheeler and Allen 2003, Weidel et al. 2000,
Schramm and Maceina 1986), then, again, weedless, earthy-colored
plastic worms and jigs are the ideal lures.
And here I need to spiel a bit about lures. So
many fucking bass guys that mar my vision throw the biggest fuckin'
plastic flippin' lures or mondo frogs or huge spoons or buzzbaits
without the slightest consideration of prey size or prey-size
selectivity any bass might display. No, these little-dick, fucking
competitive, TV facsimiles just want that big, balloon-gutted biggie to
one-up their buddies. But, for just a nice-sized adult bass, say a
two-pounder, the gorilla lures are just too damn big to birth numbers
of fish. I sensed that smaller-than-normal lures garnered more
decent-sized bass way back when I was a teenager and found that I never
had to veer from ultralight tackle and worms and jigs running four and
two inches, respectively. Science backs this up. Schramm and Maceina
(1986) found the average prey size of crawdad-munchin' 16-inch biggies
was about two-and-a-half inches. The most energy gained per that spent
by 15-inch biggies and smallies inhabiting aquaria occurred when
consuming minnows measuring four and three inches long, respectively
(Winemiller and Taylor 1987). Further, average prey size of biggies in
the wild was frequently lower than the prey size yielding the most
energy in lab settings, especially for crawdads (Hoyle and Keast 1987),
which are the major food of bass in most waterways. So put down the
rope-strength braid, the broomstick baitcaster, and the monster Brush
Hog - you'll do better with a smaller stick, smaller lures, and more
fucking sense.
AUTUMN
Quiet - the sere quiet, the hushed
breeze, the prickly sting of cool air, the stately gilded tinge of
autumn. It's my favorite season, the season of recoil, of dying, and,
appropriately, of the vacation and vacating of bass fishermen from so
many waterways. It's remarkable, the dearth of bassholes come autumn,
which may be due to their being typical fucking Americans: kids, wife,
dog, ugly tract house and oversize truck, all wanting recreation in
summer for the coming work-school doldrums of autumn.
And ironic, given that after Labor Day, once water temperatures start
dropping consistently, the straining, arduous bassin' of summer slides
into the almost effortless bounty of aggressive smallies, spots, and
biggies autumn gifts before the doom of winter.
It's elegance.
Key to autumn is that all three species return
to shallower waters and are fuckin' mad, man (Hunter and Maceina 2008,
Kraai et al. 1991); spotted bass are an especially welcome lure visitor
since they're often so deep during summer as to be out of range of
simple shore guys such as I. Like the other seasons, all three species
are usually around cover - big fuckin' rock is a common home for 'em in
reservoirs, with smallies really adoring rock along a sharp contour
break (Hubert and Lackey 1980). Smallies and spots move around more
during autumn than in summer (Hunter and Maceina 2008, Hubert and
Lackey 1980), which is consistent with eating more frequently and
fattening up for the lean winter months. This heightened foraging in
shallower water in deep reservoirs is particularly noteworthy because,
like spring, you can once again get a smallie or spot to eat a topwater
lure. Nevertheless, where pelagic prey fishes such as threadfin shad
and wakasagi predominate, the efficiency of topwater plugs pales in
comparison to below-surface lures that imitate the little, silvery
fishes - small spoons and two-inch black-pearl tube jigs.
Biggies, whether in reservoirs or lakes, will also be shoved up against
shallow-water cover (Woodward and Noble 1997), although, in waterways
where they co-occur with one or either of the other two species,
biggies tend to be lazier and less inclined to chase shad or wakasagi.
Instead, they're frequently still stuck on crawdads and similar
slow-moving prey, so much so that a Sammy or Pointer or shad-imitating
plastic lure will pull few largemouth while crawdad-colored plastic
worms can be damn near criminal given how many biggies they tempt.
Partially because they inhabit more fecund waters lacking rock than
smallies or spots, autumn biggies will often relate to vegetation
irregularities or wood just as in summer but shallower.
And of the seasons, autumn bass
are my aesthetic favorite. I'm a rarity in the fishermen society in
that my ideal fish isn't the biggest fuckin' behemoth that haunts a
waterway - trophy-sized fish have never appealed to me. Instead, my
perfect fish is, no matter the species, an average-sized adult that's
clean, man, that lacks parasites, that has full, perfectly curved fins
without fin-ray splits, that's tubby from eating well but still
streamlined, that still reflects the potential to swim fast and
effortlessly. It's akin to the most attractive woman to me: slim but
voluptuous, with hips, with tits and ass well-formed and curvaceous,
glowing, flowing hair, silky-smooth skin. Conversely, the giant bass
most fishermen salivate over are just obese, couch-potato monstrosities
to me, unattractive, unhealthy. For the micropterid basses, it's those
fish that're 14-16 inches that just seem so, so right to me. While my
average adult bass is always within that size range regardless the
season, it's the autumn bass that are most vibrant. Winter and spring
bass can look a bit haggard from the concomitant lean dinner table;
summer bass are often thin and adorned with fucked-up fins from the
rigors of spawning. But autumn bass, autumn bass have had a full summer
to chow and heal and fill out - voluptuous, they are.
Put another way: autumn bass are, from a psychotic perspective, the most romantic.
DENOUEMENT
By 2008, given my intimate relationship
with the basses, plus the fact that I'd gotten a fresh college degree,
a hot new girlfriend, and a remarkably well-paying job, I became
totally burnt out on the black basses. They were just no longer
stimulating to me anymore, plus the fact that the aspects of bass
fishing - $70,000 bass boats, endless bass tournaments, fucking
B.A.S.S., an infinity of bass-devoted lures - simply didn't jive with
my evolving atavistic paradigm of how to pursue fish. Given the new
grounding provided by a steady income and steady sex, I felt ready to
tackle new aspects of that there fishy world. White bass in Nacimiento.
Yellow perch up at Irongate Reservoir. Channel cats in Berry. Lakers in
the Sierra. Carp, suckers, squawfish, stripers, and, come summer of
2011, chum, silver, and pink salmon up in Alaska. Lots of new fishes,
new experiences, kept my mind far away from ol' Biggie and his two
smaller-mouthed brethren.
But sometimes, when you lose a big chunk of
your foundation, when 75 percent of the floor falls out from beneath
your feet, when you get thrown out into the crashing waves and abyssal
troughs of the world's myriad tides, that familiarity, that road that's
been walked down so many times before to where only the packed-down
dirt remains in its path, can be comforting, can provide a life ring to
give some stability while everything else swirls in a desultory haze.
I had a big chunk of the floor fall out from under me in 2012 when my
girlfriend of five-plus years told me that it was over, finished,
kaput, adios. I was set adrift in a cold, black sea, randomly drifting
and drowning under the weight and pain of uncontrollable emotions.
However, I found something floating nearby that helped to buoy me up a
bit, just a tad, just enough to keep me waking in the morning and
functioning in the uncaring fucking world - wintertime bass. Those
cold-water, lethargic, overgrown sunfishes provided me a bit of an
anchor in that newly unpredictable future, a bit of grounding, a beacon
holding me steady while everything else in my life changed one way or
another.
That bass and their pursuit were the
only predictable things in the early months of a single life ironically
gave them novelty - everything else was a chaotic blur. Nevertheless,
once the ground beneath my feet had stabilized and I could see the
world clearly again, bass had again become stale, overdone. Chasing
bass after I acquired a new home and new daily rhythms and a new job
just seemed, for the second time, trite, boring. Familiarity bred
contempt.
But I'm no longer a young man. Gone are the
days when I could stuff my fucking face with fat cheeseburgers and a
big basket of grease-drippin' fries and still have a trim, physically
capable body. No longer can I slug down a few forties each night and
expect to perform well at work, at play, fuck, man, at life. I can't
just pull a few more hours of physical work and somehow still keep the
belly's spare tire from inflating to megaton-sized proportions while
sustaining myself on fast food. And so as a healthier alternative for
my middle-aged body, the importance of bass as food has risen inverse
to their importance for fishing glory.
Thus
it'd be bullshit for me to claim that my bass-fishing career is over -
I still may need 'em as both food and, if my world gets tossed into the
ether again, as a stable connection to Nature. But the relationship, my
relationship as a fish Romanticist with the micropterid basses, is complete.
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