Skunked at the pond

Nasty muck

from last Monday morning, ~8am, on the way to work

I sit here, typing this on the train, filled with shame. I got skunked. Not by some new body of water, or a famously-fickle spot; at the old reliable retention pond. The same place I have caught so many largemouths I could wallpaper a small room with their pictures. 

And yet, I'm sharing what happened. This definitely counts as a misadventure.

After a lackluster fishing weekend - at least in terms of numbers - I decided to stop by the good ol' pond this morning for a confidence-booster. I put my collapsible rod in my backpack along with some tackle, and headed out on Claire's bike (mine is very broken).

I got to the pond, and opened up my backpack, ready to put the rod together. Here is where things started to go wrong. The rod breaks down to 5 pieces, 4 of which have guides on them. Often I'll break it down with the line still going through the guides, lure still attached. This makes it a quick process to get fishing when I only have a few minutes to wet a line. It also means there is one piece - the piece closest to the reel - that is NOT routed through the guides, and is easily forgotten. Trying to put my rod together, I realized it must be sitting somewhere on the garages floor, perhaps rolled under a box.

I stood there for a minute, starting to think about profanity, trying to decide if I should ride back home to get it. At this point I only had 45 minutes until my train, so I decided to stay there and try and use my rod.

The bottom piece didn't fit snugly into the handle, since of course I was missing the wider piece. I happened to have some rope in my backpack - not sure when I put that there - and I tied the rod piece to the handle. This effectively put them together, somewhat loosely, but it turned my 5'6" rod into a 4' rod.

Improvising

Looked like a little kid's fishing rod. There should have been a Barbie or Mickey Mouse on it. Except for the weird rope everywhere; I guess it looked more like a pieced-together rod somebody found in the trash.

Unfazed, well maybe a little, I tied on a wacky rigged worm and started casting. The water was cold, the air was cold, and the water was high. At first I didn't see any activity, but upon closer inspection I noticed baitfish in a few places, and big wakes circling. I really don't think these wakes were carp, because every so often a bigger fish would come close to the surface in a splash, and the baitfish would freak out and disperse. I've seen my fair share of carps coming to the surface, and this wasn't them.

I waited, watching the wakes, and cast ahead of them. I let the worm fall, then would wiggle it back to me, doing my best impression of an injured fish.

All of the sudden, a fish grabs my worm, makes a run for it, and explodes out of the water, about a million little fish swimming away for their lives. Must have been at least a 12 incher LMB; but I'll never know. My silly little kids rod was strange, and I couldn't keep the tension.  It was weird fighting a fish on such a short rod. But at least I had a hookup!

I tightened the drag, removed the 3 pounds of weeds from the exposed hook, and recast.

I did this for the next 35 minutes; about halfway through I switched to my black fury. I had a few hits, but due to the strangeness of my setup, I didn't react quickly enough, and didn't set the hook. Missing that one piece of my rod made it feel like I was fishing with a pencil- it was very hard to feel what was going on in the water.

As I casted, I kept glancing at my phone, calculating how much time it would take me to ride to the station. At a certain point, I had to go or I would miss my train.

Defeated, I untied my rod-rope, took apart the rod, and zipped up my backpack. Pedaling to the Metra station, I plotted my revenge on the retention pond.

I'm Obsessed

Geese at the spot

Didn't have time to hit up my new spot on the way to work this morning, but I did give it a once over to check water levels, weeds, etc. I have nightcrawlers in my backpack, just in case I have some time to hit up some water today. There were some geese hanging out at my spot. I saw them last evening too; I wonder if they are there because they eat the fish, or because there's water to swim in, or because the grass has lots of tasty bugs... I need to learn more about birds!

I also need to learn more about the trout and salmon that swim around lake michigan, because I DEFINITELY want to hook into some of those guys! I caught those 3 rainbow trout at burnham a few weeks ago, and they fought harder than any fish I'd ever caught. Maybe that's why those fly fishermen love trout so much. And they're tasty to boot.

amazing! this guy is my hero
check out his blog here

There are some pretty amazing posts on windycityfishing.com of fall and winter salmon/trout fishing on the lake. Check this out- caught by GEO at Northerly Island - which is 15 minutes from my work. (Click here to view the full report)

At this point I'm pretty obsessed with fishing- I'm wondering if I'll calm down about it once winter hits, when my open water fishing opportunities become much more limited. But it seems like a lot of guys can catch perch, salmon, and trout from shore throughout the winter. That's bad news for my other interests!

I'm tentatively planning on gearing up "music-making" season in the next few weeks, transitioning from all-fishing all-the-time to a nice balance of recreational creative music-making and some fishing. Maybe some smallie fishing... or maybe some salmon and trout fishing... Whups, there I go again. Maybe the cure is to fish MORE! Maybe I'll get tired of it.

If so, I might get cured soon! Planning on hitting up the Fox this weekend, hopefully for some smallie; the weekend after that my lovely wife and I are heading to Flint, Michigan to hang with my family and do some fishing. This will be our third annual "fishing trip;" we rent a pontoon boat, hit Lake Nepessing, Lappeer, MI, and catch a lot of sunfish. Maybe we'll get into some bass, or maybe even pike this year!

Beautiful Lake Nepessing, Lapeer, MI - Fall 2010

Confessions of a bass angler

I have a confession to make.

I've been posting and posting about my undying need to catch a smallie, because I've only caught a single 2" smallie ever in my life! Well, faithful readers, I haven't been completely honest with you. It wasn't that I was lying, I didn't realize I had actually caught bigger smallies before. My fish-identification skills are pretty dismal, to say the least.. But they used to be even worse, if you can believe it. That's how I didn't know I caught smallies before!

Here's me in 2009 on Intermediate Lake in Michigan, days after basically fishing for the first time:

pay no attention to the sunglasses, look at the pretty fish

I had been catching bluegill like crazy, and when I caught this I certainly didn't know what it was. I'm sure my fishing instructors/buddies told me, but I was too excited to remember.

I was going through some other old pictures, and I found a picture of the second bass I'd ever caught (after that smallie above); caught in September of 2010, in the north Bode Lake in Hoffman Estates, IL. I know slightly more about fish now, and looking at the fish in my hand, I thought... smallie?? Isn't that a smallmouth bass there!!?

I've gotten better at holding fish since then

I double checked with the good folks at windycityfishing.com, and they confirmed my suspicions. To make things even crazier, most people don't seem to catch much of anything at Bode, let alone bass, let alone a SMALLIE! Smallmouth bass aren't even listed as "present" in Bode Lake, as far as I know. Bode connects to the Fox River (Bode is quite a ways upstream), perhaps this little guy made the journey all the way just to be caught by me. That makes me feel pretty special!

So there you have it; all my complaining about not catching smallies has been for naught. Turns out, when I'm fishing for bluegill and can't identify anything else, I catch smallies. When I'm specifically targeting smallies like my life depended on it, I catch everything but smallies.

Fishing is great!