Inspired by bass

Inspiration hit me this weekend.  The flows out here in Oregon are slowly coming down to summer levels but they are still a little high, which means the trouts will still be a little tough to catch.  I didn't feel like battling the rivers, and Clif at Lunker Hunt recently wrote an interesting and informational post about some bass tactics.

Last year I spent a couple days out on the reservoir just west of town with absolutely no luck.  Since then I got a tip from someone about a small pond near the reservoir that is supposed to be a good spot.  I can put two and two together to get five, so I decided to put my limited bass gear together and head out to the pond to explore and probably get skunked.

Just like Clif suggested, I used a Texas rigged, dark rubber worm (not Senko but the same thing I think).  I have always used weight with these, but since Clif is adamant about going weightless I figured I'd try that out.

I walked along until I found some areas worth giving a go and started tossing the worm around.

I tried along the banks, out in the middle, under trees, in and around logs in the water, and nothing.  There are some weeds in the warm still waters out here that I'm not used to.  And when I say "some" what I mean is "lots."  And when I say "lots" what I mean is the entire pond is filled with them.  If you look out into the water mostly what you see is about one inch of water, then solid weeds.  There are some open spots, but it's mostly weeds.  This doesn't make the fishing particularly easy or productive.  My tactic was essentially to cast to places that looked good and let it sink into the weeds, sit there for a few seconds, then give a few wiggles and reel it back in.

I did this maybe a hundred times with nothing to show.

Then finally I struck some gold.  I cast in under a small overhanging tree about two feet from shore and within one second, fish on!  He didn't fight too hard and stayed in the small channel of open, weedless water near the bank.  Looking back I was probably pretty lucky that he didn't run in around any of the branches underwater or shoot off into the weeds, because I was using a 6 or 8lb line and it probably wouldn't have held.

But I managed to land my first bass in probably 3 years or more, and what a bass it was!

I measured the toad at right at 20", and I wish I had a scale because it would be nice to know much he weighed.  Any guesses??  20" and fat as hell!

Here is where I hooked him.

I would love to hear from you bass people out there about any tactics you have for fishing extremely weedy water.

I also welcome any weight estimates.  My wild guess is about 4-5 lbs...?