Wind, sludge, bass, and ticks

The elusive fuzzy bass
(Damn you iphone camera...)

This "spring" has been insane- record high temperatures hovering in the 80's this week!? Transitioning right from a mostly snowless "winter" to a glaring-sun "spring" that feels more like summer? But what does it all mean?

For the fish I mean, what does it all mean for the fish.

I've been reading Windy City Fishing like a madman, every day learning about more and more people catching their personal bests, or having success in places that don't usually turn on until later in the year, and of course pictures of monster fish caught in this beautiful weather. As the temperature rose, my focus turned turned to the outdoors. I can't wait to get the kayak out on the water, hopefully this weekend. Sometime soon I hope to get a fish finder and make my yak into a fish-finding and temporarily-inconveniencing machine (as opposed to a fish-killing machine). But until then, I'm doing what I can... and that means many short trips to local spots.

The other day I fished the retention pond, and it was absolutely covered in green sludge and dead plants, and was actually bubbling. Turns out, this isn't the result of illegal toxic waste dumping, it's something called spring turnover. Apparently when the top of the water warms, for some scientific reason it causes all the stuff on the bottom to come up to the top. I don't quite understand how this works, but I know it makes casting fishing a little more complicated. At least on my local pond, all that "stuff" basically covered the top of the water, making it difficult to fish. I also tried some night fishing at the pond, as some WCF'ers have been having luck with that- but it was very difficult to avoid all the sludge and clean my lures after every cast in the dark. Not to mention I can't figure out where my LED headlamp is, so I have to hold my flashlight in my mouth.

I got home from work earlier than expected yesterday, so I naturally headed for some water. I conveniently already had my fishing gear in my car, as if I planned this little impromptu trip. Besides the pond, and Salt Creek, the next closest body of water to my house is Songbird Slough. It's in a preserve that was until recently closed for construction. Now that it's open, my thinking was I could catch some nice bass there who aren't used to fishing pressure. I have great feelings about Songbird; I caught my first topwater fish there last year, 2 feet from shore, in the dark! It's a beautiful preserve filled with all kinds of unusual birds. But I digress...

Turns out there are ticks in there...

When I reached the edge of the water, I felt like I was looking out onto some wild ocean instead of a small preserve lake. The wind was ferociously ripping the waves every which way, pulling up dirt and mud from the bottom, causing the water to be extremely choppy and completely opaque. My first fishing spot happened to be facing directly into the wind, making casting difficult. I tied on a lipless rattling crankbait (many local fisherman have been doing well with these lately) and attempted some fishing.

It was difficult to say the least. I quickly lost hope of catching anything, not really knowing how bass would relate to such windy conditions. If I were a bass, I would go hide somewhere and wait out the wind storm. I've heard walleye become more active when the water is choppy, as it diffuses the light entering the water, making things darker for them... I fished for about 20 minutes, working the shoreline without any luck. A few times I did hook something big that seemed to move, but every time it turned out to be a big branch churned around by the wind.

Although I enjoyed the surroundings - it is a pretty preserve - I didn't come to look. I came for fish. In an effort to actually catch something, I hopped into my car and headed to the good old retention pond. Would I have learned more as a fisherman trying to fish Songbird in the wind? Perhaps. But I only had a few minutes, and wanted to make the best use of that time.

I got to the pond, looked down the hill at the water, and saw massive amounts of green stuff floating by my usual spot on the pipe. When I fish the pond, I almost always fish in one spot, right on that pipe. Every other body of water I fish, I move around trying to find the fish, which seems to be the best way to fish... However, most of the year there is a solid wall of cattails and tall tough grasses that make shore fishing most of the pond a pain in the ass to say the least. That's part of why I want to take the kayak out there...

Turns out, this March the foliage isn't so much of a wall, it's more like a 3 foot wide grassy sidewalk that lines the banks. Many spots provide easy access to the water. Having to choose between sludge-covered water and an open but unfamiliar spot, I headed to the open water.

I threw a variety of lures, but nothing got any attention. I saw what I was pretty sure were fish close to the surface swimming around. In my imagination, what I was seeing was bass chasing baitfish around the pond, causing boils at the surface. I could see slow moving wakes on the water surface that would intersect smaller bunches of wakes, causing small underwater explosions. Could the wind be doing this? Maybe... I'm still new to this. Either way, whenever I saw a boil I would cast my lure just beyond it and retrieve it into the bedlam. Dragonflies cruised the surface, and it looked to me like they were teasing the bass. I really hoped one would get close enough and a monster bass would surface and devour the dragonfly. Nothing against dragonflies, that would just be cool.

This ended up saving the day
(check out that muck in the background)

As a last ditch effort, I tied on a green tube jig. I know I mention this lure a lot, but it has caught me more fish - and more variety of species - than anything else I've ever used... except maybe nightcrawlers. First cast, and something took a swipe at the jig. Fish! So maybe those wakes ARE bass.

I worked the same area for a while, but didn't get another hit. Ok, I thought, I really should vary things up. I need to find the fish. I took the tube jig off my line, replaced it with a peanut-style crankbait, and started fan casting the pond. I worked my way back to the pipe, looking at my watch every 30 seconds, knowing I had very little time to fish. Then I found myself back on the good old pipe, working my crankbait around the "weed" edges. I figured if bass like to hide around weeds and submerged timber, maybe they would take advantage of this sludge and use it as cover. I tried different retrieves- starting and stopping; letting the lure sit on the water and twitching it every 15 seconds; but these weren't catching any fish.

A father and kid walked by, fishing rods in hand. I think the man lives in the house next to the pond, I wonder how he feels about me fishing there so often. I wondered if I was taking his spot. The little kid said "Hi! I'm my dad's fishing buddy!" in a giddy voice. "That's great!" I said. They walked to the other side of the pond and set up shop. I hoped they would catch something!

Back to fishing, I knew I had to leave in a few short minutes... I tried retrieving the crank about 2 feet under the surface, slow and steady. I heard a splash, and thought I saw a frog about 30 feet to my left, half in the water and half on the bank. I wasn't sure it was a frog, and I'd never seen any at the pond, but who knows. I cast the crank again, and slowly reeled in my line. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw/heard another splash; it happened very fast but I think I saw the frog's tongue fly out, grab a dragonfly, and suck it back in. Amazing! That was awesome! Hey my crank is stuck...

I turned to look back at my crankbait, which I'd forgotten about, and noticed I'd hooked into something heavy, and it was moving. Fish on!

Dirty bass! Had to pull him through the muck

After the shortest battle in fishing history, I pulled out another nice pond bass, my first crankbait catch there. A nice looking bass! It wasn't huge, but for 20 minutes of fishing after work, I've done worse. I stifled my normal giddy cackles due to the audience farther down the shore, and quietly snapped some shots of me and my new buddy. Of course, the bass probably didn't appreciate the hooks in his mouth, and didn't think of me as his buddy. I carefully put the fish back in the green water, and with a splash it was gone. 1 for 2 on the pond on a Tuesday, not bad.

I fished for a few more minutes, but I had a wife that needed some dinner, and really I'd accomplished my goal. I really like catching fish, and being outside in this weather.

As I drove back from the grocery store, sitting at a stoplight, I was absent-mindedly scratching my head. Suddenly I felt something, and pulled it out. The light turned green, and I looked at what was in my hand, and I immediately recognized it as a tick. AHH! I shouted loudly, and flung it out the open window.

CB Cooks: Mole ("moe-lay")

Makin' mole! (with my new homemade hand-carved mole stirrer)

When anybody mentions "mole" (the sauce, not the animal) a lot of things often come up.

"Oh yeah, the Mexican chocolate sauce," "It's super hard to make!" "It has so many ingredients in it" "It's too sweet for me" "I've had the premade kind and I don't like it one bit" "It was invented by nuns who had to feed some important guy and only had chiles and nuts and stale bread in their kitchen" "It takes three days to make" "How the hell do you pronounce it?"

As far as the last question, I'm pretty sure it's "moe-LAY" for us gringos, with the accent on the last syllable. Not sure why there isn't actually an accent there, perhaps because the word comes from a pre-columbian language. (In fact, I'm pretty sure "moe-LAY" just means a mixture of stuff or a sauce; the word "guacamole" just means "mixture/sauce of avocados". Pretty sure, not completely sure, so don't quote me on that. My spanish degree only covered spanish, not native mexican languages.)

I'm a huge fan of mexican food, and many say the concoction known as mole is the greatest accomplishment of the entire cuisine. In a lot of ways it is very complicated- many ingredients, many flavors, and the complexity only gets more complex when you serve it with other food like turkey (as is traditional for many moles). (Remember- "moe-LAYS" not "moles")

As I understand it, often mole is prepared on special occasions, because there are many ingredients; also, it's often paired with slow-cooked meat, which of course takes a while to cook. For these reasons (and probably many others) mole is one of those dishes (like tamales) that seems difficult and beyond reach for us lowly gringos. Especially on any day that isn't sunday!

Well I've got news for you! I'm definitely no expert in mexican cooking- but I think I have at least a handle on making "moe-LAY." In fact, I made some last night (on a wednesday night!). It took about an hour, and it will be even tastier today. I've made it a bunch of times, and I think I've come up with some rough guidelines (i.e. not an exact recipe) for making mole. In almost every mole recipe I've ever seen (in english OR spanish) there are certain types of ingredients that are always present. Based on that "research," I've come up with a list of ingredients- basically, you need at least one thing from each category to prepare your mole. Just to reiterate, I'm no mexican cooking expert, and this is most likely complete blasphemy... But it tastes just like mole in restaurants. If I had a mexican aunt, maybe this is what her mole would taste like.

Below I've listed the 6 categories, and some common ingredients that go in those categories. My idea is this: if you take at least one thing from each category, you will have something that is pretty much a mole.

INGREDIENTS:

FRUITS

- like dried chiles (absolutely necessary), raisins, bananas, plantains, etc

NUTS

- peanuts (or peanut butter!), walnuts, almonds, sesame seeds, pecans, etc

SPICES & HERBS & STUFF

- cinnamon (or mexican canela), anise, cloves, cumin, oregano, avocado leaves, allspice, coffee, and yes maybe even chocolate (but it's not entirely necessary!) - and SUGAR

VEGETABLES

- onions, garlic, tomatoes or tomato sauce, etc

LIQUID

- broth, stock, water, chile soaking liquid, beer, anything!?

THICKENERS

- masa (like prepackaged tamale mix i.e. Maseca, or fresh from the tortillería), stale tortillas, toasted stale bread, animal crackers (I've heard this is a common old mexican lady addition)

HOW YOU MAKE IT:

Most recipes call for a very involved individual frying of each set of ingredients before everything is combined and blended together. I don't doubt this makes a thicker, richer, more voluptuous sauce... But this also exponentially lengthens the time needed to make this dish. When I make this, generally, I just throw everything into a blender and blend away! (If I fry anything, I'll get some onion and garlic looking toasty in a pan with some oil before adding it to the blender). Basically, here's the process:

L-R: Cloves, allspice, ancho chiles, piloncillo (sugar), tortillas,
oregano, pepper, onion, cumin, garlic, peanut butter,
tahini, walnuts NOT PICTURED: oil, guajillo chiles

1) ASSEMBLE your ingredients (at least one from each category, and you pretty much must use some kind of chiles)

For my wednesday night mole, I used:

dried ancho and guajillo chiles (fruits), peanut butter, walnuts, and tahini (ground sesame paste) (nuts), cloves, cumin, oregano, allspice, and some mexican piloncillo sugar (spices), onions and garlic (vegetables), chile soaking liquid (liquid), and stale corn tortillas (thickeners)

2) If your dried chiles are hard and old, and you can't run out and get some more, you might want to rehydrate them. Put them in a bowl, cover with hot water, and let them sit for 30 minutes or so. Mine were old, so I did this yesterday. Rick Bayless says if the soaking water is bitter, throw the water away.. If not, use it in the recipe! Mine last night was sweet tasting, so I used it. Many people will toast their dry chiles in a dry skillet before soaking, but I didn't do that. If you do it, make sure not to BURN the chiles.

soaking chiles (smells a whole lot like raisins)

3) BLEND - Add everything to the blender, and blend the &*#$ out of it. It might be better to add things in steps, to make sure everything gets blended.

4) STRAIN everything! This is key. The idea is to get a homogenous, velvety sauce with no lumps whatsoever. I have a strainer I pretty much only use for mole, I call it my mole strainer. 

Strain! Check out that gorgeous color. All that red/orange is from the chiles,
no tomato products here

5) Take the strained liquid and put it in a pan. If it's really really thick, add more liquid.

6) SIMMER - Add salt, pepper, whatever, to taste, and simmer. If it's too bitter, add some sweet stuff like sugar, honey, etc. Chiles are relatively bitter, you'll probably need to sweeten the mole at least a little bit.

7) That's it! You can simmer it for a long time, or not... Definitely gets better the next day.

I really like it over bean enchiladas, or grilled chicken, or pretty much anything. You can even put it on eggs! It's a really versatile sauce, and since there can be so many flavors in it, it goes with almost everything.

Using those 6 categories, the combinations are endless! By varying the type of chiles used, or the amount of sweetness, or the amount of other fruits or nuts, this base recipe could create an infinite variety of moles. This isn't entirely authentic, but the flavor is pretty close. If you follow these simple steps, in a matter of minutes you can be on your way to creating your own custom mole!

Chris gets waders and walks into a river

my new stocking foot waders

As soon as the credit card was swiped and they handed me the box, I wanted to tear it open, put the waders on, and get into some water! Turns out, we still had some errands to run. So wading would have to wait...

That afternoon (Sunday) Claire and I got home, and I tried on the waders. I put my LL Bean boots over the stocking feet of the waders, this would work, I thought. Packed the car, and tried to figure out where I should go. My new fishing friend Rob (Osprey) offered a ton of extremely specific advice and tips on a particular spot on the Fox. As he explained what I should do, what I should use, and how I should use it, I typed everything in a text file so I could remember it later. I'm not so good at remembering things normally. It helps to have a record!

It was super generous for him to share all this information with me, I just hoped I could text him a picture or two of a nice fish. In the interest of not sharing secrets from other fishermen, I won't say where I went.. But I've seen pictures of monster smallies taken there. I was psyched. Hopped in the car, floored it, and I was off.

After a half hour drive through the countryside, I arrived at my destination. I jumped out of the car, and got into my new waders. I salvaged a broom handle they were going to through away at work; I drilled a hole in it and tied on some line, thinking I could use it as a stakeout pole for my kayak. Didn't work so well like that, but it might work as a wading staff (I think that's the right term). This would be my first time wading, and I was doing it alone; I figured better to be safe than sorry.

I had my clippers and jig buster around my neck, and used a carabiner to secure a small tacklebox. I suddenly understood why everybody has fancy fishing vests- this was a lot of weight on my neck! I clipped the wading staff line to my wading belt (didn't have anywhere else to attach it), and put on my boots. I won't lie, I felt like I was pretty awesome at this moment- it's one thing to dabble in fishing every few weeks (like I had done last summer)... But here I was, fully equiped with my own waders, tools, camo hat, and I even had some homemade lures in my box.

Who was this person in the car door reflection? Was this the same jazz-playing film-scoring hip-hop-loving video-game-playing indoor-kid I'd always been? It definitely was. But now, judging by my appearance, I was a real-life angler too.

There were a whole lot of people shore fishing, looked like they were going for carp or catfish. Their rods propped up, jingle bells afixed, they chilled out waiting to hear a jingle. Following Rob's advice, I entered the water in a very particular location- which luckily didn't interfere with anybody's lines in the water.

Immediately the rush of cold water swirled around my ankles. As I slowly, carefully waddled out deeper, the water got colder and I got a very weird sensation in my legs. It was just like when you get your blood pressure taken, but on my legs. I wondered if there was some pressure thing happening, especially since there was air trapped in the leg parts of the waders due to the wading belt. I stepped back to the shore for a minute, trying to figure out if something was wrong on my waders.... They seemed fine, and my legs' circulation wasn't being cut off, so I got back in the water.

the view from the water

It's a very unusual feeling, trying to walk in flowing water, feeling your way along with your feet and a broom handle. I couldn't see below the surface, so I was walking blind. I'd read a lot of articles and tips on wading, and I suddenly understood why everyone says it's best to present the current with the smallest surface area possible. If I faced the current, it definitely pushed me downstream a little bit, but if I turned and let it hit my left hip, everything was fine.

I was trying not to fall over, not drop my rod, and follow the detailed instructions Rob had given me. I wasn't sure that I found what he described, but it might have been. Being new to this, it was hard to figure out exactly what I was stepping on, whether it was sand or rocks or gravel or weeds. One of the most interesting things was the contour of the bottom. Intellectually I knew that there were holes and sand bars, but looking at the river with my unexperienced river-reading eyes, it just looks like it gets deeper and that's it. Not the case. There were boulders, holes, high points, steep drops, slow drops; all kinds of stuff going on just below the surface. Using my three "points of contact" - my wading staff and two feet - I made my way into deeper water, trying to position myself in a good fishing spot.

Not convinced I had reached my destination, but wanting to get fishing, I began casting a Heddon torpedo. This was one of the many lures I'd found floating at Busse while I was kayaking. It's not that I don't buy lures - I definitely do - but I also find a bunch!

A guy and a kid were fishing, perhaps doing a father-son thing, about 20' downstream of where I was. The kid was obviously bored with fishing, and decided to start throwing rocks into the water. Whenever I'm in these situations, I'm not sure what the right call is. I obviously didn't want him to throw rocks, possibly scaring away the fish. Not to mention the proximity to me! A few times rocks landed about 2 feet away from me. I turned around and gave him a stern look. His dad watched but said nothing. The kid saw me, then started throwing rocks in the opposite direction, away from me.

Back to the river, I was in my river-fisherman-impression mode. Riffles, holes, flats, these words tumbled around my head even though I didn't have a grasp on exactly what they all were. Remembering what Rob had instructed me, I fished accordingly. I found it frustrating trying to get my lure where I wanted it, only to have it pushed downstream by the current. There must be some trick to this. Maybe that's where waders come in- position yourself so you can get your lures in the strike zone. I tried moving out deeper, but once I was up to my collar bone, I had trouble casting and moved back to shallower water.

I threw the torpedo, big white spinnerbait, peanut-style crankbait (not sure if it was actually a peanut... I found this one too), chartreuse buzzbait, and I tried out some of my homemade inline spinners. I'm sure I tied on some other stuff, but right now I can't remember.

Either way, what I was doing was apparently not enough to entice the fish to play. I was starting to get cold. This water was like ice, even though it was well above freezing. At home, I was originally going to wear shorts and a t-shirt under my waders, but changed into jeans and a sweatshirt at the last minute worried about being warm enough. Good call Chris! Next time I'll need to wear some fleece pants, or long underwear, or both. Maybe some flannel would be good to. Wouldn't hurt my real-life-angler image either! Got to get some pictures of me in the waders, ideally holding a river smallie.

I moved around, trying different angles, hitting different spots, fishing with the current, against the current, across the current; I tried to hit the slower water next to faster water, the water downstream of obstructions (trees, etc), but nothing managed to get a fish on the end of my line. The whole time I was there, I didn't see a single fish jump or even bubble near the surface. Well, I might have seen one out of the corner of my eye, but I'm pretty sure that was one of the many shore anglers casting.

As the sun went down, I started to really freeze my ass off. The air temperature wasn't so bad, it was the frigid water that surrounded the lower half of my body. I looked at my old iPhone - also hanging from my neck (I used some fancy knots to afix it, by the way...) - and realized the clock wasn't right. It said 3:41am. I knew the park closed at sunset, but I didn't know what time it was. Seemed pretty close to sunset.

I carefully wading back to shore, the water flowing off the waders, hitting the rocks, and making its way back to join the rest of the river. My boots were rinsed clean of all the mud, I was warmer, and my new waders more than did their job of keeping me dry.

Packing up the car, I was satisfied. Although I had been thoroughly skunked by the Fox - my sometimes friend sometimes enemy - I did a new thing. In my mind, only a serious real fisherman type would do. In comparison to other fishermen I knew, either in person or on internet message boards, I know basically NOTHING about fishing. They've forgotten more about fishing than I know. But I was making progress.

Although I didn't have any smallie pictures to post, I definitely looked like a fisherman. And I felt like a fisherman.