Anchor Line Buoy
Will Kirkpatrick won’t claim the “legendary angler” title, but anyone who fishes Texas’ Rayburn Reservoir would do well to listen to his advice. Kirkpatrick is a fishing school instructor and seminar speaker who has amassed a tremendous store of fishing knowledge. When it’s windy on his home lake, he often anchors his boat so he can work a productive area thoroughly, but discovered long ago that a big bass invariably wrap around the anchor line as he’s battling them to the boat. His fix is beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness. He bought the largest marker buoy he could find and affixed a clip with a short line to it, which is attached to the loop in his anchor cord where it is thrown around his boat cleat. Then, when he realizes he has a big Rayburn bass hooked, he reaches down and lifts the anchor line off the cleat and throws it in the water. The wind carries his boat away from the anchor line, and the marker buoy allows him to return to the exact same spot after the bass is safely boated and released.
Perfect Lure For Youngsters
My oldest boy, Hunter, age 5, caught his first bass all by himself this weekend and I’m pretty excited about it. He cast, worked the bait, set the hook and reeled in his first chucky largemouth. In the process he matured. Now he’s telling me how to catch them!
With the addition of his little brother to our fishing trips, Hunter has been forced to do more on his own lately. This past weekend I took the boys to see their Uncle Dwight in Oklahoma and we spent some of it on the pond bank.
I set Hunter up with a YUM Dinger on a spincast rig because the Dinger is an almost foolproof bait and he’s favoring the spincast over his spinning rig lately. The spincast is just easier for his small hands to work. He walked over by his Uncle (who had already missed a couple of fish) and I shifted my attention to his little brother. When I looked up, Hunter’s rod was bent and he was fighting the bass like a pro.
He did it all himself, reeling the bass all the way to the rod tip. I’ll correct that action later, because there’s no place for criticism in a boy’s first bass. I took some pics and his Uncle strung the bass up on a stringer. While I support catch-and-release religiously, I also know there are times when a half-dozen bass on a stringer is a fine thing. Kids don’t cotton much to catch-and-release.
The Dinger is the perfect bait for just-coming-of-age kids for several reasons. First it works with little or no effort from the angler. My five-year-old is not capable of a complicated sustained retrieve, and with the Dinger he can reel, pause, twitch – anything – and the Dinger catches fish. It’s heavy enough to cast well and is weedless when rigged on a wide-gap worm hook. If the youngster is casting on his own, safety (the child’s and your own) is pretty important and with no exposed hook, the Texas-rigged Dinger normally won’t reach out and hook young (or old) skin.
Gear should be kept simple. Spincast is the easiest for youngsters to use, but spinning gear is fine for older kids. Keep initial trips short, and consider leaving your rods at home. Ponds and stock tanks are perfect places for youngsters to learn to fish. Normally the fish are more cooperative and easier to find. This also gives youngsters freedom to throw rocks, look for frogs and generally take breaks and learn about the outside.
In addition to the Dinger several other lures shine in young hands. Other small soft plastics are good and can be Texas rigged for safety. Short lizards and worms also are good, and in a pond should be rigged weightless unless the wind makes it too tough to cast. The Rebel Teeny Wee Craw is a fantastic bait that catches anything that swims. The two tiny treble hooks make this a lure for a little older or more advanced kids, but they will have a ball with it.
Put Together A Topwater Pattern
Alton Jones says that it’s important to use a monofilament line when throwing a topwater lure because it floats and provides the most action whereas fluorocarbon sinks and deadens the action. A tidbit from topwater king Zell Rowland is the “listen to the fish” when you fish a topwater bait by working it with a variety of retrieves and noting what you were doing with the bait when a fish struck. It’s important to work it slow, medium and quick, as well as throwing in a variety of pauses and erratic retrieves, he says. In addition to what you were doing to the lure, note any other factors involved when the fish struck – was it near wood cover, what was the water depth, how aggressively did the fish strike? All of that information can help you put together the most important pattern for that day.
While fishing with Edwin Evers on Oklahoma’s Lake Hudson a couple weeks ago, Evers showed why he’s an Elite angler by putting together the optimum pattern in only three fish. We were throwing the new Rattlin’ Spook and One Knocker Spook to the upstream points of several islands. The rain subsided and Evers stopped retrieving his Spook while he removed his raincoat. A chunky 2-pounder slapped the Spook after it sat motionless for several seconds. Evers started adding more pauses into his retrieve and caught another fish, and then began exaggerating those pauses to catch another. Then the game was on! He caught a dozen or so in the next hour with a retrieve of several quick twitches and a long pause.
There are many factors involved with Evers’ successful pattern, including ones he controls (retrieve, lure choice, support equipment, location) and ones he does not (weather, water conditions and flow, fish’s attitude). To be successful, he refined the ones he could control and adapted to the ones he couldn’t.