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Double Drive - "Blue in the Face" (2003 - Roadrunner Records) ..the best hard rock band you've never heard of great new 2 My Photographs You like photos? I love taking them. Click here, if you wanna see some of my work
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Friday, Nov. 14, 2003 - 10:01 p.m. Very good. Not as good as Tuesday, but there aren�t many days that good . Still, I ended up cleaning 22 nice white bass. I caught a total of 41 (yes, I actually kept a close count). The average fish was smaller than on Tuesday, too. I still could have kept another 10, but stopped keeping them once the bucket became heavy. And I really didn�t feel like cleaning any more fish than the 22 I did anyway. No fish cleaning station, no real flat surface to place the fish on to do the job at all. I ended up using a somewhat-flat area on a large fallen tree to clean the ones I did. What did I do with the carcasses? I�m glad you asked. I placed them in a Wallyworld bag, and put them into the bed on my Hillbilly truck. When I stopped at a gas station in the town of Findelay, I bought myself a 20-ounce diet Mt. Dew, washed my hands in their restroom, and, oh yeah- I tossed the bag into their dumpster. Of course- I made sure that nobody was looking before I did the deed, too. The bin was full of many smelly things anyway, so my fish bones didn�t make things any worse than they already were ;) Now, about the white bass�. They weren�t in the spot where I caught all those fish on Tuesday. Several things conspired against this spot producing as well as that today. The wind was from almost dead south. On Tuesday, the wind was from the south-south east. This might seem like a minor thing, but it made a big difference. The wind was only hitting the shoreline with a glancing blow. On Tuesday, it was dead-on the same area. Since white bass feed in the choppiest water, that means they weren�t schooling up in the corner like they were before. I did land a few keepers, but the action ended in just a few minutes. My choices were to stay there and beat my head against the rocks, or try something else. I like to think fishing is as much a mental challenge as anything. You have to be able to adapt to changing conditions to find the most fish. Being that I spend most of my time fishing from the bank (as opposed to sitting in a boat), my options are somewhat limited. I have to be able to walk to a leagl spot, or I can't fish . In a boat, you can fish almost anywhere. I did notice the seagulls working the shad about 200 yards down the bank. This made sense, because the main force of the wind was hitting the shoreline that way. How to reach these fish, I wondered. The easy access on the shore ended where the marsh area began. To bypass that swampy area, I had to either swim across a 5 foot gap in the shoreline (I wish I brought the camera today. Easier to show you than to explain) or hike through the backwater area about � a mile out of the way to reach the same spot. I chose the hike. Hey, I need the exercise anyway, right? I managed to make it with only a few weed seeds stuck in my hair and mud on my boots. Was it worth the hike? Not a first. I was stubbornly trying to get strikes by using the same techniques that worked on Tuesday. That meant letting my pair of jigs sink for a few feet, and then slowly retrieving them. I caught nothing this way. That meant I had to try other ideas. The one that worked was a very fast retrieve. I only had strikes when I reeled the line in fast enough to see the top jig (of the tandem) almost on the surface of the water. This method caused at least 35 fish to fall to my jigs, and another 30 to hit my line without being caught. All in about 1 hour. Oh yeah- during this time the find was blowing into my face at 15-20 mph. Not to mention the intermittent SLEET that pelted my face, making me actually feel somewhat cold. And I never get cold. They didn�t stop hitting until the wind switched directions from the south to the west. This seemed to shut them down for good. I gave up on them after 20 minutes of nothing at all. I still had the 20 minute hike in front of me, so I started my hike back. Somehow, I managed to make it all the way to the corner of the bridge without falling down face first, tripping and breaking my ankle, or falling into the marsh. After cleaning the fish, I had one more goal for the day: I wanted to catch another green sunfish for the aquarium. Yes, I brought one home on Tuesday. But it didn�t survive the transfer from the bucket to the tank. This was mostly my fault. Forgetting a 4� fish in a gallon Ziploc� bag for over 60 minutes spells certain death. And it did for this poor little sunny (hey, we had to go to a visitation at the funeral home. Good enough excuse?). This time, I waited until I was ready to leave. I filled the bucket almost to the top with water. I worked the rocks around the bridge until I caught the perfect Greenie; not too big, not too small, lipped hooked so it would recover quickly, etc. This took about 20 fish to achieve (mostly bluegill, but the first few Greenies were just not right). I walked back to my truck, and guess what? The stupid driver of the Hillbilly truck had left his headlights on (um, that would be me). For the entire 3 � hours I was fishing, no less! And nobody stopped long enough to turn them off. So much for small-town friendliness� I loaded everything up, and turned the lights off. I then waited for about a minute, and then turned the key. It started. Thankfully. If nobody was willing to pull over and turn the lights off, I hate to think how long I would have waited for a kind soul to stop and jump my batteries� I drove the 45 minute drive home, and parked at my usual curb spot. I grabbed everything inside of the truck, and then reached into the bed of the truck for the rods and the bucket containing the Greenie. One problem, though: the Greenie had managed to flip himself out of the bucket. He was flopping around on the bed liner in the back of my truck. Not again! I gathered him up, and I put him into the bucket. I took the bucket inside, and put it by the aquarium. I put my airstone into the bucket, and left him to slowly reach room temperature. After 2 hours, it was getting close. I then slipped him into another gallon Ziploc� bag, but this time I put the airstone in with him. He sat like this for about another hour, at which time the water was almost the same as the tank. I let him free, after feeding the other fish in the tank. He didn�t swim 6 inches before he noticed the falling mealworms. He then charged over and gobbled two of them down before the bluegill or the Jack Dempsey could reach them. I guess he survived his ordeal in the bed of my truck just fine��� Next attempt to catch the whites? Sunday afternoon. Hopefully. Since I don�t have a professional football team to watch anymore, fishing with the boy for more of these fighting fish (catch and release only this time) sounds like the perfect substitute��..
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