A Day on the Water — Bass

Water levels in Lake Huron and connected waterways is over a foot lower that last year.  My best shallow Quanicassee River spots, had less weed growth than previous springs and I caught few bass. Down the "South Branch Canal", casting a 2/0 White Dive Banger very close to shore provoked 12 to 18 inch bass to either violently rush or stealthily stalk the popper.  Converting stealthy follows to hits frequently required a cat and mouse game of pauses, light twitches or pulling it under the water was sometimes effective. I got bass near the bend and some times a 2nd...

I started out early covering a lot of water, finding no fish, seeing no beds.  I caught a fish while casting during a random down wind drift. After anchoring to fight it and making a cast from there I got  a better fish. Nothing for the next 2 hours as I explored far and wide.  I saw that the three amigos, Todd, Ken and Scott were getting fish closer to shore.  I anchored on the left flank of the conga line and I also started hooking fish on a couple of brown Clousers.  They were using pink flies including the...

  Wakely Lake is a long drive and a long way to drag a kayak full of fly gear just to land a few (6) bass12 to 16 inches.  I was busy with many smaller  bass, a couple bluegills and a pumpkinseed.    The best pattern was to cast Poppers to lily pad edges across deep, scattered, upward growing pond weed.  Then 3 pops and a pause.  Today, like last week, a Lime Chartreuse Bug Popper pattern was much better than black.  Fishing deep with a bead head Clouser (Popovic's Jiggy) in Chartreuse and White got a small pike and fast action on...

My secret Bluegill pond used to have very big Bluegills.  I have been seeing blue worm containers littering the banks for the last few years.  I am worried the big ones are gone and the gene pool is headed toward smaller Bluegills forever.   Fish were hitting a prototype #6 Black Bluegill Choker and getting hooked well, only a few hooked deep.  The foam head needed to be a bit bigger so it floats higher and the larger head momentarily can catch on the outside of their mouths so they can be hooked before they can gobble it down deep.  This...