Bass put the fight put back into fishing

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Bass put the fight put back into fishing

It's often been said that smallmouth bass have more fight in them than any other fish

 

 

June 28, 2008

DOUG EDGAR / owensoundsuntimes.com

 

 

I knew it was time to return to civilization when a smallmouth bass swam under the boat and I started to salivate.

 

It was years ago, when my father and I spent weeks in the summer cruising around the islands and harbours of the North Channel, north of Manitoulin. Part of the unspoken deal was that if I caught fish for dinner, the start of the inevitable trip home might be put off for another day.

 

We were living pretty close to nature, but the Pavlovian response to a fish swimming by gave me pause. It's one thing to have your stomach rumble a bit when a butter-drenched breaded fillet is in the pan, but such a reaction is something else when lunch is looking back at you.

 

My appreciation of bass has changed a bit since those days. I'm not one to turn up my nose at a plate of fresh fish, but now it's pretty well all about the catching -- which just so happens to start today in Grey-Bruce.

 

It's often been said that smallmouth bass have more fight in them, pound for pound, than any other fish. They can go from deep, strong runs to multiple headshaking jumps in a split second. As a rule, once I hook a trout or a salmon there's a pretty good chance it's going to end up in hand, but quite a few bass have spat lures, jigs and even bait back at me before going on their merry way.

 

When they're ready to bite, bass can do a lot for an angler's self-esteem, striking at plugs, spinners, spoons, flies and live bait with a vengeance. If you can watch a bass smash a topwater lure on a glassy bay in the evening and not get a bit of a rush, you might be a corpse.

 

But they're not the perennial pushovers some people would have you believe. Smallmouth especially can get pretty moody and be quite selective, especially when the weather turns. They can check out a bait for quite a while before deciding whether to move on to a taste test.

 

I also think they are somewhat curious. More than once I've gone snorkeling and turned around to see bass following along as though they are trying to figure out what I am. I think that curiosity plays a role in why they strike so many bizarre looking lures.

 

On the subject of lures, it seems there's hundreds of new ones touted as the only thing the fashionable bass will have hanging from its lip this season. After all, bass fishing is big business.

 

I'm not immune to the siren call of the tackle aisle, either. There's lots of new soft-bodied baits out now and I've built up enough to fill a couple of boxes to try this summer.

 

Smallmouth and largemouth bass share the instinct to protect their nests and young. The male bass stands guard over the nest, a cleared-out depression in a gravelly area for smallmouth, gravel or sand for largemouth. They can live to be 15 years old.

 

This area has bass in many of its inland lakes and rivers. In fact, one of the biggest smallmouth I ever caught came out of the Saugeen near Paisley. My wife pleaded the fish's case and I let it go. Over the years, as she's seen pictures of big bass in magazines and on fishing shows, I think she's come to realize the depth of my sacrifice for conservation and marital harmony that day.

 

There are smallmouth along the shore in Owen Sound and in the lower stretches of the Sydenham River, although not many people seem to fish for them. I've also seen them upstream of the mill dam, but I've never seen them further up than Harrison Park.

 

Generally speaking, smallmouth like deeper and colder water -- in the 15 to 20 C range 60 to 70 F range-- than largemouth and can often be found around structures such as logs and rocks as well as weedbeds. They'll go pretty deep to find the right temperature during the day when things heat up. Some seem to hang out in roving schools, while others will find a favourite spot and stay there. I think such behaviour has a lot to do with what they are eating -- sometimes they will key in on minnows, other times they seem to be after crayfish and leeches and such things. They will often come into shallower water in the evening to feed. One of my favourite ways to fish for smallmouth in our smaller lakes is to drift and cast a twisty-tail type jig from a kayak.

 

Bait is a proven bass-catcher, with worms, minnows and crayfish good producers. Watch out with crayfish to make sure you don't spread the invasive rusty crayfish around. Don't move crayfish, or other self-caught bait for that matter, between waterbodies. Also, the new fishing regs prohibit dumping bait buckets in the water -- even if the bait was caught in the same waterbody.

 

The standard-licence limit is still six and the rivers in the twin counties still close early, but since the MNR rewrote the fishing rule book it probably makes sense to double check for any changes.