You northerners all know the feeling! My reels are clean, new line, hooks sharp, lures doctored/modified, catalogs frayed... you know. Gosh, it was nice to finally get out to actually fish.
I can see a fair number of ponds, pits, and small reservoirs from my home on a mountainside well above the plains where Colorado bass waters lie. When a thaw is imminent I check those gleaming sheets of ice through binoculars for signs of thawing. This week they began to break.
The pond I chose to fish has been my "winter laboratory" this year -to try and learn something about winter bass. But we froze up relatively early this year, in early December, and we've stayed locked up. Usually there is a January or early February thaw but it didn't seem to be happening. Finally!
I chose this particular pond for my winter fishing because it is so small (3.6 acres/7ft deep basins) providing a somewhat captive audience and rapid heating during warm spells. The bass are generally small –most 12-14”– but not stunted, being healthy and pretty. The two largest I’ve caught there were 17” and 18-1/2”.
In the past, it had a nice amount of vegetation (Eurasian milfoil and coontail) –not too much, not too little– along with a simple but interesting layout with two basins connected by a narrows, making it fun to fish. However, upon my return to the area after a couple of years abroad, I found the pond completely devoid of vegetation; The county's war on invasive milfoil has been too heavy-handed, it appears. An angler I spoke with earlier this winter, prior to ice-up, told me he’d seen workers raking out vegetation last summer. It’s SO clean however that I suspect grass carp were put in. Another pond I fish –a big-fish factory– was similarly treated. I saw a group of grass carp there a few years ago and contacted the manager to voice my concern that it wouldn’t take many grass carp to drastically alter the vegetation. Also to say what a great fishery it is and how important vegetation is to bass. Between the lines I was saying, “Don’t fix what ain’t broke!” The result however was a complete eradication of the vegetation! I re-contacted the manager and he admitted he’d “overshot the numbers” of grass carp planted. Ach!!
Today, the laboratory pond had good clarity (about 3ft visibility; ~6ft from a fish’s eye view) with some green turbidity due to the fact that much of the shoreline is inches deep in Canada goose droppings. The sky was mostly blue but some patches of high clouds came through on occasion as well as some breezes that rippled the surface knocking down light penetration -a real help in clear cover-free water. The pond is also fished regularly, it being close to a suburban residential area and despite the cold water I shared the little pond with other anglers both today and when I was here just prior to freeze-up.
The only cover remaining for prey fish (bluegill, YOY bass) is along the banks: the immediate shallows that exclude mature bass due to lack of depth, overhung grasses, a few standing trees on the bank, and two small shrub-willow groves. There could be a bass magnet anywhere out there though –I’ve seen some very small objects attract bass, including such things as single tumbleweeds that blew in. In one of my ponds there was a large log that would float around and, even over the open water at pond center, it could give up bass. Then there was the 55gal drum someone had rolled into a pond that eventually lodged against a small clump of cattails; my fishing partner that day plucked a 7lber from beneath it!
In my “laboratory pond” there is a small bar (created by outwash from a small drainage pipe) that is nicely situated at the mouth of a shallow cove. The bar creates a steep discrete contour dropping from 3ft into the 6ft deep basin there. It is so small –so unobvious– that no one else is likely aware of it, or would pay it any attention, yet it gives up fish nearly every time I'm there. Interesting what can constitute a key area, how small such spots can be –made especially attractive in such a cover-free pond.
I started today, as I usually do, by walking the shore some to get an idea of shoreline activity. Before freeze-up, bluegills, small bass, and the mature bass hunting them, were often tight to shore; I had a heck of a time catching them because they were so spooky in the ultra-shallows and difficult to get close to, or cast to, without bolting them. They only vacated the immediate shallows when early winter water temperatures dropped into the low 40s. Today, (water temp 44F) there were very few fish at the shoreline, only a few ~3” bass.
With the “swimming pool” circumstances (clear cover free water) I knew I’d be facing, I added an UL spinning rig to the light and medium spinning rigs, and the Float-n-Fly rig, I was going to carry. The UL is a 5-1/2 fter with 4lb line and I took my first bass of 2016 on it –a pretty dark heavily-marked 13”er– on a 1/16oz. 2” Twister-type grub at the little bar. The cove, being out of the sun in the SE corner and screened by a shrub-willow grove, was still frozen over and my bass’s coloration indicated that the fish had probably been cruising some in the deep shade under that ice.
I fished the open water of the main basins –the mouths of the narrows in particular– switching between the UL grub, various larger jigs, a small jerk, a small bladebait, and a small lipless drawing nothing. I can sometimes pick fish up in open water away from cover but this is far less reliable than areas and objects providing good “ambush points”. And after 2 hrs and drawing a blank I headed over to what is now probably the best cover in the pond, a submerged fence, with some accumulated flotsam, stretched across the W end of the pond. I took three 12-14”ers there on the UL and little jig, each nearly tight to the fence –five feet out and no go. They were slow but dogged fighters and I had to take my time with the UL rig.
Without those cover spots, it would have been a tough day, the kind in which I might question just what the heck I’m doing out there. Randomness is… bewildering and disturbing. I like to think –maybe need to believe– I know what is up and what is down. Today, I was able to touch base again and came out feeling all was in order in the world -the bass being where one would expect them. I would however like to know how many fish ignored my lures in those cover-free basins.
February ice-break bass! And a pretty thing too. But, aren’t they all?
Red teeth.
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