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Thursday, Jul. 03, 2003 - 8:24 p.m. I didn�t get home last night until 10:30, so I didn�t have time to post a story about my fishing trip with Moose until now. Nothing interesting happened today, so the white bass annihilation is the subject of today�s �journal� entry. I beat Moose to the lake by about 15 minutes. I still had a rod rigged up for bluegill, so I , naturally, started throwing the jigs into the shallows around the boat ramp. I caught about 10 nice, fat bluegills in those 15 minutes. I tossed them all back, since they weren�t our goal for the livewell yesterday. Moose showed up right on time. He brought one of his boats, a 1984 Ozark fishing model. He has only had it for about three years, but from what he told me about what he has sunk into it, he has a steal. It started easily (not a given with an older two-cycle engine), and ran quite fast for only having a 40 horsepower engine. Oh yeah- here is a shot of Moose:
Since it was only 5:30 when he put his craft into the lake, we had a little time to kill (he told me they don�t start biting until 6 in the evening. I had a coworker ask me today how the white bass know it is 6 pm. I told him that they wear digital watches). He drove the boat into a couple of bays I have never been into (this is the big army corps of engineer�s lake south of Mohall that I fish on all the time), and pointed out areas where he has seen otters (no, not the person from the movie �Animal House�) and other wildlife. The �wildest� thing we spotted yesterday was several gray herons, squawking at each other on the shoreline. He worked his way over to his hot spot, and slowly worked the boat back and forth until he found the perfect depth on his sonar, and then he tossed his anchor over the side of the boat. It is a good sign of how your fishing will be when you hook your first fish before the anchor hits the bottom of the lake. I had a nice fish on, but lost him when he snapped my line. This was to be the pattern all evening. White bass have a mouth full of sharp teeth. If you don�t want to loose a bunch of lures, you need to cut your line and retie your lures, after cutting off a section of frayed line. I didn�t do this often enough, and I lost a few jigs because of this. How good was the fishing? We had many times when we both had a fish on our rods. There were several times when Moose had fish on both of his rods at the same time. He just kept his foot on one pole while he landed the fish on the other. These fish (average size? 12� and 1 lb.) were located one foot or so off of the bottom of the lake. We were fishing on a sandbar in 10 foot of water. If we had moved 50 feet further out, we would have been fishing in at least 30 foot of water. That was why there were so many fish in our spot. They spend the hot hours of midday in the cooler water, 30 feet down. As soon as the sun starts to set behind the tall trees lining the shoreline, they move up to the sand bar. There they gorge themselves on the plentiful gizzard shad that hug the bottom. We just interrupted their feeding by sending them down something that looked even more appetizing to them (Moose used nothing but live minnows, and I switched back and forth from minnows to my homemade silver tinsel jigs) How many did we catch? We didn�t keep a score card, but surely caught over 100 nice fish in a little over 2 hours of fishing. How did I come up with that figure? We ended up cleaning 55 fish. We threw back more than we kept. Simple as that. Here is a shot of the livewell, as we were headed into the dock:
When I pushed down on the fish, they didn�t have any play. The well was full- period. It took us about 30 minutes to filet these fish. I went home with a gallon Ziploc� bag packed full, and Moose took home two quart bags stuffed to (pardon me) the gills with filets. Tonight�s supper? I cooked (among other garden harvested items) 10 nice filets of white bass, covered with melted butter (not margarine, btw) with garlic, salt, and fresh lime juice. Codeman and I devoured the entire batch. I think we could have eaten another 10 filets, too�. Two last photos: Moose thought it was funny when I caught this 5lb. Carp. I thought, just for a few seconds, that I had either a huge white bass or a nice walleye:
I was wrong, of course. Earlier, I took a photo of Moose, after he landed a drum perch (another "rough" fish) that was about the same size. Unfortunately for you, the camera (my old, old digital) wasn�t set up properly (it was on ultra-close-up), so the photo was out of focus. Oh well- I enjoyed the fight, even though it managed to tangle up both of my rods and put me out of action for about 10 minutes (while I untangled the mess)� One last photo:
This photo was taken after the sun had completely set behind the trees to the west. It was still light out, but the only direct rays from the sun were hitting this bank of clouds , high above us in the sky. I think we both noticed the effect at the same time. The resulting photo doesn�t involve any editing/enhancing at all. The different shades of red, orange, yellow, and white were totally created by nature�. Have a SAFE, happy 4th of July, all. I may or may not post here tomorrow. I think most of you will have better things to do than read this �journal� tomorrow, anyway��.
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