Fishing for bass? Look in heavy cover
Ijust read “The Upright Angler” by Keith “Catfish” Sutten, written years ago but still true today. I’d like to share: “An upright angler doesn’t throw his trash all up and down the river.” (Let me add that all fishermen should carry a trash bag along when fishing to “leave areas better than you find them” always taking litter home for proper disposal)...An upright angler takes care not to spill gas or oil in the water when topping off his outboard motor tank. Chemicals are deadly to fish... An upright angler takes only the fish he needs to eat and puts the rest back for another day...Share the joy of fishing with children — they are the future of fishing...Give your best to the sport. Practice a code of ethics and encourage others to do the right thing when enjoying the outdoors.”
It would be ideal if all of us could do the above plus some whenever we enjoy all of the wonders our outdoors has to offer.
This week’s fish tip: Our weather cooling off this time of year tends to encourage bass to begin hiding out in heavy cover such as dense weeds, brush piles, lily pads, fallen trees and reedy shorelines making a variety of tactics worth trying. Anglers have found an inline spinnerbait such as Snagless Sally, the lead-head jig or a Texasstyle 12-inch plastic worm all have big appetite appeal for bass. Or if you like to fish crankbaits, use the sinking type — the lipped or lipless kinds that descend vertically to remain close to waiting bass. A neutral-buoyancy lure that is weighted to sink so slow it appears suspended, is also worth a try. Suspendots or metallic stick-ons can be added to make a floating lure sink plus alter its action from a wide wiggle to a narrow one.
With an inline spinner, the blades cause the lure to wobble off center, ideal for activating a frog or other trailer. Retrieve only fast enough to revolve the spinner and bring it through heavy cover.
For leadhead jigs, use a one- to two-ounce leadhead with a soft plastic curly tail or crayfish body. Cast high over thick weeds and let the heavy body fall through thick cover to the bottom. Work it with gentle twitches of your rod tip to give it good up and down motion.
Soft plastic worms can be worked over and through the thickest weeds. Try activating the lures to imitate the crawling, wiggling, darting movements of frogs and crawdads. The foot-long giant worm is very attractive to a whopper bass. Work them with a 6/0 worm hook over the surface. Because they are heavy, no additional weight is needed for them to wiggle over, in and along dense cover. They also work well with Texas-rigged with a 3/9-ounce sinker.
If fishing for stripers is your interest, be aware that overly heavy gear is not needed — instead, working with bass tackle or even lighter with line in the 6- to 14-pound class and a medium weight spin or bait-cast outfit is perfect. Hooking on a plastic worm in the middle permits both ends to flap about, producing a much different effect on a stop-and-go or twitch-along retrieve. Some of the regular worm hooks can be used for sidewinder rigging — an ordinary jig hook, of suitable size is ideal. Just insert the eyelet through the worm at about mid-point, then tie the rig onto your line, it can be used with or without a worm weight or sinker. For best results in shallow water, try it without any weight at all.
Try lipless or vibrating crankbaits for catfish while trolling slowly or jigging vertically. The slabtype jigging spoon worked up and down over the bottom is also worth a try. A barrel swivel, tied onto the line two or three feet ahead of your lure, will solve the problem of weeds and other debris being caught on the line and sliding down on top of the bait.
Put a bobber a couple feet up from your small hook when going after bluegill. A great time to take a kid or two fishing with you so they can enjoy it and learn — use nightcrawlers or meal worms in backs of coves, especially around any structure such as brush piles, trees and bushes. Fortuna Pond is an excellent place to take a kid fishing, even the whole family.
Contact Jean Wilson at jeanrenegade@ gmail.com or call (928) 247-4450.
LINCOLN, Neb. — Nebraska’s no longer nice, at least in its next tourism campaign. The new sales pitch has a decidedly selfdeprecating bent: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”
The slogan, which the Nebraska Tourism Commission unveiled Wednesday at a Nebraska City conference, will replace the current “Through My Eyes” campaign this spring, commission marketing manager Jenn Gjerde said Thursday.
State tourism director John Ricks told the Omaha World-Herald that because Nebraska consistently ranks as the least likely state tourists plan to visit, the marketing campaign needed to be different.
“To make people listen, you have to hook them somehow,” Ricks said. “We had to shake people up.”
Nebraska has used several slogans in its efforts to entice tourists, including, “America’s Frontier,” ‘’My Choice, Nebraska” and “Nebraska ... the good life.”
The slogan that debuted in 2014 was: “Visit Nebraska. Visit nice.”
Ricks told the Lincoln Journal Star that “the perception of a place to visit in people’s heads is more important than the things to see and do when you get there.”