Steelheader finds his bass part 2

After the comments on my first post about bass I took some of the advice offered and purchased a few bass poppers. Saturday morning I was on the lake just after sunrise.

I started off with my 4 weight but soon found it was not enough rod to cast the not so aero dynamic lures. Luckily I had foreseen this might be an issue and brought along a 6 weight. After switching to the heavier rod I found that the leaders I was using were not heavy enough to turn over the flies. I didn?t bring anything larger then a 5x tapered leader. I did find some 3x tippet material left over from steelhead fishing in my pontoon boat side pocket so I cut the leader back a foot or so and used a short piece of the 3x material. Now I was at least getting something that resembled a turn over. An hour of messing around with rods and leaders, I am finally off the find Mr. Bass.

I got on a chartreuse, froggy looking thing and start tossing it up into the reeds and lilly pads. Didn?t take to long and my first customer. Pretty cool fishing for bass with a surface bug. First fish was a 1 pound or so bass. Took awhile to get number 2, but again another fish about a pound. This was kinda fun.

I started playing around with different retrieves. Quick short strips making a large pop or gurgle. Longer strips pulling the fly underwater and letting it float back to the top. All would catch fish at some time or another. But the most successful method was to cast to a likely spot amongst the weeds and let it soak. A lot of the time this would get a strike within about 20 or 30 seconds if not give the fly a couple of short quick strips and let it soak. Sometimes I would have to do this a number of times before a fish would strike but it was the most effective method I could find. I also noticed the bite really didn?t start until the sun had risen high enough to shine a little more directly on the water.

At the end of the morning I had caught 15 or 20 bass on my little popper. Size ranged from less then a pound up to 1 or 2 pounds and a couple coming in at about 3 pounds with most fish in the 1 to 2 pound range. The popper itself was destroyed. Very little paint left on it and its tail feathers were chewed to almost being torn completely off.

All in all a nice morning. Am I hooked on bass fishing? Not quite. It was fun but Sunday morning brought the first summer steelhead to hand. So all of next weekend will be spent throwing steelhead bees on the Stillaguamish. I won?t have time to fish for bass anymore.


[This message has been edited by Kerry Stratton (edited 19 June 2006).]

Kerry,

At last, your back to proper fish! *G* Bass may be fun, but the hit of a summer run on a skated fly will raise your heart rate for sure.

My Father's Day trip to the Wynoochee didn't happen, but I'm planning on hitting it this week. Best reports are early morning and late evening. I've been watching a couple of likely looking runs that don't seem to get much pressure. Gotta try them out.