So I jumped in my wife’s car and headed up to Garry2r’s on Friday morning. The plan was to cut and nail some baseboard to finish off his new laminate flooring installation, drink a beer, sleep, then launch the ranger bright and early Saturday morning and catch some serious bass.
The trim got finished, a beer somehow became 7 or 12, but hey, who was counting? I know there was only one bottle of wine involved. At least there was only one empty in the morning,which came a tad later than usual, and a lot noisier, and after a hearty breakfast we headed out for one of Garry's secret lakes.
I got a tiny corner of the truck cab so there’d be room for Garry’s two buddies, Buck and Vu, to join us. Now Vu’s no problem, well, he’s a huge problem at the best of times, but not a big one if you know what I mean. He can fit himself easily into my duffle bag with all my weekend’s clothes and my shaving kit already in it. One can only hope he didn’t mark his territory while he was cozied up in there on my clean underwear and teeshirts. He just squirms till he has space. Buck, on the other hand, is like a smallish hairy horse. He’s very well-behaved as long as there’s no body of water or live fish involved, then he turns into an animal. Hmm. I guess he’s already an animal, isn’t he. Let’s just say his little doggy brain turns to mush at the sight of a flapping fish, and his big hairy paws just natcherly move him towards any large body of water anywhere within – oh, ‘bout 100’ or so. But more about Buck and water later, much more.
Well, Garry’s hotrod big boy toy gets into the water and we get aboard. He fires it up, sounding like some kind of nitro-burnin’ fueler on a Sunday morning at the track. Very cool if you’re into the visceral pleasures of powerful gas-guzzlin’ toys like I am. And off we go across the lake in search of a likely lookin’ bass hole.
At something just under 400 mph (maybe not quite, but fer sure faster than a canoe or a trolling motor) it doesn’t take long to get from here to there so almost before I had Vu pulled back down to the deck we were idling into a little channel behind an island.
Garry sez “You get the back deck.” Fine with me. It has a comfier looking perch to rest my citified butt on, and he has to run the trolling motor. We each load up a couple of rods. Garry waits till I make my first cast and suggests “You might wanna put the worm on yer spinning rod and the crankbait on the baitcaster.’’ Couple more casts with the baitcaster and I’m seeing what he means. Chalk that one up to lack of experience. Well, I swapped ‘em around and started chucking wacky worms, pink 5” & 4" Senkos later, at the spots Garry said to, and right away the bass started biting. Lotsa smallmouths, not huge but decent, normal for the area I normally wade, if the bass bite is on.
Garry keeps coaching me with useful tips and thoughts on what type of lure to try, and how to present it, and the bite goes on. I have boxes of lures that I’ve collected because they look cool, hoping they’d look as good to the fish as they do to me, right? Now ya gotta remember my fishing experience is limited, so it may well be that a whole lot of what Garry was sharing with me might be old news to some of you, but he had me using lures that I had no idea what to do with before this weekend, and they were catching fish. I never even got my old faithful floating minnows out. The ones I tried were the plastic worms, 4” & 5”, rigged wacky style at first and then later weedless when we got into the green stuff. Both ways got me fish. I didn’t have as much luck with crankbaits but then Garry was using much smaller ones than what I was, and running closer to the surface, and catching a bunch of fish dammit. I switched back to a plastic frog and after a couple of casts at likely looking logs mentioned to Garry that it was probably too big. He said “No such thing. Wait.” And just about then I get a rock bass not much bigger than the frog. Okay, so it’s not too big, so I stuck with it and scored a bunch of little bass, rock and smallmouth variety, all fun.
Shortly after he said to try some of my inline spinners that I thought were for trout. I held up a couple for his approval and he shook them off. Finally I got one he liked and tied it on. Apparently old time bass guys are kinda fussy about which spinners work and which don’t. ...........WHAM! First cast. I scored. And almost each cast after that brought something to the boat. I am becoming a big fan of these things. I won’t share this advice here. That’s Garry’s to give.
Meanwhile Garry’s running thru his repertoire of rods, baits and techniques and banging off every kind of bass known to Ontario man. His were bigger than mine too, which sucked. He got the only largemouth, a smallish one by his standards, but the only pic we took. It’s on his camera so we’ll need his help to see that one.
The fishing was fun. After all, how can a warm summer day catching lotsa fish on a real live go-faster bassboat be anything less than cool for any guy who grew up snortin’ meth (I mean the kind that comes from nitro-methane fuel).
But the fish weren’t the best entertainment. That was courtesy of Buck and Vu and their witless, oops, unwitting accomplice Garry. I would have got pics but we were usually drenched or about to be drenched and I didn’t figger my cameras needed washing in lake water.
The first fish I had on, I was bringing him to the boat and I sorta heard Garry mumble “Get him in fast.” I guess I figgered this was some sorta Kawartha fisherfolk jargon for “boat him” so I did my usual creek thing and brought him to the side of the boat, where my feet would normally be in the creek, and reached down to lip him. In fairness Garry did say something else, but I missed the words, and as I reached nonchalantly down to lip my first catch this huge hairy blond rocket blew by me and landed smack on my little smallmouth – Buck, the bass killer, followed closely by his nutty buddy Vu who was bouncing and yammering at my feet, presumably saying something like “You stupid ass, get out of that water right now. It’s a lake, not a bathtub” but generally just getting in my way. Buck meanwhile is huffing and snorting and looking up and down to see where his prey has snuck off to. He really got bent out of shape when I hoisted my little bass aboard while Buck was still treading water. So there I was with Buck snorting and shaking in the lake beside the boat, Vu yammering and bouncing around my feet, presumably telling me to hoist his buddy Buck aboard, and Garry laughing his ass off on the front deck. Actually he wasn’t so much laughing as casting and retrieving and pretending not to notice the train wreck on the rear platform. My first thought was for Buck. But he was quite happy in the lake, although he looked like he’d have been happier if he had my bass in his mouth. Vu was happy as a clam, doing what he does best, barking, jumping, licking and probably peeing on my foot, although I didn’t want to check. So I got busy with my poor bewildered bass. He’d been hooked, bulldogged, attacked by a giant hairball and now he’s hanging from my hand with a huge hook in his face and a little white furball raising all kinds of hell right below his tail. I did the merciful thing and threw him back, on the other side of the boat from Buck, which drew a frenzy of activity from him, Buck, trying to get around the transom to eat my fish. At least it kept him occupied for a few minutes dog paddling around with his face in the water trying to find my bass, and his watery perambulations kept Vu bemused enough to shut him up (almost, but not quite) for a few moments respite for me. Garry seems inured to this, and in all fairness, when I said “Sure, bring ‘em along. I’m not a paying customer and they’re lotsa fun.” He shook his head, gave me a kinda sad look, and said “They really are a pain in the ass.”
Now, in retrospect, This kind of experience, the dogs I mean, is something that lots of folks would pay good money to experience. It’s like being in the middle of a Keystone Cops comedy being filmed, without the cameras, and with real fish.
Buck and Vu replayed this comedy routine at least five more times before the day ended, until Garry tied ‘em both to his seat post. At one point Buck jumped in and headed for shore. Garry didn’t look worried, so we left the worrying to Vu. He did enuf for all of us, and more. Finally, after snuffling around on shore and crashing about for about 10 minutes in the bushes, Buck decided to rejoin us and splashed back into the lake right where we were working some logs, swam to the motor, and let Garry haul him aboard, much to Vu’s relief. He didn’t seem to mind the drenching we got whenever the blond monster sponge clambered back aboard, and I learned quickly how to hold my poncho up between me and Buck to stay somewhat dry at least.
On one of the Buck fishing episodes Garry had had his fill of Vu helping to retrieve the fish and Buck and chucked Vu into the lake with Buck. Little poop-Sue-Something-Whatevers can swim pretty well, if a little daintily compared to big ole Buck who just glides thru the water like he’s got a trolling motor up his butt.
So, in summary, I learned to use some new lures, some new presentations, how to spend 7 hours in a smallish boat with two dogs, and most importantly I got my bass fix that I’ve been needing.
Oh yeah, and we blew a tire and ate a wheel bearing on the boat trailer on the way home, but it was a great day.
Thanks Garry.
JF
