Visited a large pond I haven’t fished in a number of years, since the 2013 “1000yr” flood changed the landscape. Went from a nice mix of veggies and open water to a carpet of dense coontail. Gone were my big smallies. How were the LM’s faring? I’ve waited a few years hoping things would settle out, open up, and the veggies would diversify again. I found it’s still dominated by coontail but, following the early fall vegetation crash, there were cracks to fish.
Pond has gizzard shad, bluegills, yellow perch, and crayfish. I fished on either side of a front that dropped air temps from the 90’s to the 30’s overnight, with a good 10” of snow. That's a serious front!
Pre-front I found bass mostly away-from-shore, typical it seems during the late summer/early fall weed die-off, taking advantage of the bluegills and shad. But I found, and recovered, crayfish parts in the gullets of those bass, which got my wheels turning for my next outing.
Post-front, the core water temp had fallen about 4F; Water is a tough customer in terms of gaining and giving heat. I failed to mark fish in the depths this time, caught none there, and found yellow perch shallow in as little as 3fow. Dropping a camera down into the depths showed a funky-looking soup of what looked like decomposing material. The bottom was coated in a rusty red flocculant that was likely oxidizing ferric iron, freed up from the vegetation and sediments.
Frigid fronts, so early in the season, promise some re-heating with the days still just long enough and the sun still high enough in the sky. And I found a carnage zone area where bass, bluegills, and a 7F heat gain came together. Oh, and one carnage zone bass contained a partially digested mouse!
But the main story, and the majority of my fish, came by targeting crayfish hunters along the shoreline, the obvious place being a 300yrd long rip-rap lined shoreline. With all the vegetation though there wasn’t much substrate to scratch, just a narrow shelf right along shore. Over that 300yrd stretch though, the bass still needed prominant overhead cover, and I only caught mature bass where there were stands of hard-stemmed rush, or beneath —or out from— prominant shoreline trees. Some accurate careful casting was needed as the water tight to shore was shallow and calm. I had to —or did my best to— keep casts quiet on entry. I spooked a few.
Unlike my last “laboratory pond” this one had a good population of bass in the “quality size” bracket, ~2lb fish. But no lunkers. Perfect for a guy who hasn’t had much time to fish lately.
That’s the news from Lake Wobegone.
Is that what I think it is??!!!
High flying "carnage zone" bass. Guess he was enjoying that 7deg heat gain.
