Small water, big results

Shootin’ n Snaggin’ with the Frugal Fisherman

There’s an old adage among fishermen: “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day at work.” I couldn’t agree more. Being in the outdoors on a sunny day in the fresh air is reward enough. But not catching fish outing after outing gets old, even to the most grizzled of veterans. Such was my case recently. I’d tried several attempts at catching everything from bass and walleye to crappie and bluegill at Lake Herrington, the Kentucky River and Jacobsen Park Lake. I didn’t catch a single fish, nor get a single bite at any of the locations.

Before I continue, let me preface my above lack of fishing skills by outlining a few facts. First of all I’m not a professional fisherman and I don’t own a boat. I use a 12’ Old Town Dirigo kayak as my main vessel. It doesn’t have a motor, so I must paddle everywhere I go. It also doesn’t have a depth finder, so locating fish is a crap shoot. If you’ve ever seen a kayak you know there’s no live well, bait containers, storage areas or a mount for a trolling motor. There’s barely enough space for me, a small tackle box, a paddle and a rod.

But what a kayak lacks in amenities it makes up for in stealth. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve literally floated right on top of fish because my kayak is so quiet in the water. So there are pluses to go with the minuses of such a small craft.

As you can imagine, trying to cover large bodies of water like Lake Herrington or the Kentucky River in a kayak can be a daunting and at times intimidating task. There’s just so much surface area to get to that it’s hard at times to stay patient. So after several attempts with no reward, I decided to change my strategy.

Frugal goes small water

A friend mentioned fishing in a two acre pond his brother owned. Bingo! This could be just what the doctor ordered for me to get out of my fishing slump. To say the least I was excited. So much so I worried my friend to death. Unfortunately he couldn’t meet me the morning of March 16. He had to watch his daughter. But he knew how bad I was itching to catch a fish, so he sent me along without him.

The pond was located just off Winchester Road about 6 miles outside Lexington. It was built some 6 years back and is fed by an underground spring that forms a small creek some 200 yards from the pond’s shallow end. When it was built, the pond was stocked with largemouth bass, crappie, channel catfish and bluegill. My friend repeatedly told me how he had caught bass that weighed anywhere from 2 to 6 lbs. last summer. At this point I’d take a one-pound bass. Hell, anything on the end of my line sounded great.

I arrived around 9 A.M. that Tuesday. Since most local tackle shops have yet to stock live bait such as grub worms, night crawlers or minnows, I figured to use an array of artificial lures to try and catch a fish.

It was still early in the morning and the sun had yet to fully warm the entire pond, so I tied on a 1/8 oz. White Strike King Mini Pro-Buzz Buzzbait—a classic top water lure I‘d had numerous successes with in the past. I decided to use the smaller weighted model because the pond’s size made it easier to cast the bait in and around brush and stumps, and the 1/8 oz. buzzbait can be retrieved at a slower speed and still be kept on top of the water. Considering how cold the water was I wanted to be able to retrieve the lure as slowly as possible.

Buzzbaits have two main attractions I like when fishing foreign water—a big propeller blade that produces a lot of noise and vibration and an eye-catching skirt that gives bass a good, bulky mouthful of color and movement to home in on. I also used a 2/0 trailer hook just in case the bass weren’t at maximum aggressiveness. To be honest, I didn’t want to miss a single strike, seeing how I had yet to experience a single bite thus far this season, hence the trailer, or extra hook.

My first few casts were into the shallow end of the pond fed by the spring. Nothing. It’s here I was about to change lures when I thought to myself, be patient, this pond is small enough to walk several times over. So I decided to I’d work the shore line and intermittent water around the pond’s entirety.

Good thing I did. I no more than made my second cast down the edge of the pond’s dam when I hooked a 1 ½ lb. largemouth. I was so shocked to feel a fish on my line that I nearly dropped my pole in excitement. I think I even yelled, but who knows seeing how I was the only one there. Rejuvenated and reaffirmed I fished that buzz bait for another two hours. I only caught one more bass that day—a small one around ¾ lbs. I didn’t care how much either bass weighed. I was thrilled to simply catch something.

Frugal wisdom

Now if you are like me and have trouble working large bodies of water early in the season when fish are less aggressive, or don’t own a boat or kayak, or simply don’t have the time or resources to make a trip to a larger body of water, then try your luck at a local pond or small lake.

Once there I recommend you go with what you know. If you’re a live bait fisherman then use live bait. If you like spinnerbaits then use them. Same goes for whatever else you’ve got in your tackle box. If you feel it will work, it probably will. Let’s face it, confidence in a lure is half the battle. If you don’t think a lure will catch a fish then why use it in the first place.

Lastly, be patient. Sometimes it’s about the time you want to give up that your closest to striking gold. And if you’re like me you need several casts to get into a rhythm and to start to work a lure properly. So commit to a lure and work it. You just might be surprised by what decides to give you a bite.

If you have questions or suggestions for the Frugal Fisherman e-mail me at frugalfisherman@hotmail.com.