I Knew I Was Taking Chances Going Fishing Twice This Week

With today being Saturday, I figured the parking lot at West Neck probably would be pretty full, especially since I wouldn't be arriving there until about 9:30 (can't help it that I'm getting slower as I get older), and as I quickly learned after turning into the drive, I was correct. I also knew that there was a slight chance of some showers in the area today...the TV weather girl told me that while I was eating breakfast. To my delight, though, she was wrong. Nary a raindrop fell on me today (good thing, too, 'cause y'all know I'm sweeter than sugar, and we all know what happens when sugar gets wet...it melts, of course).

And further, unlike my earlier trip this week, I managed to rig the boat and launch it without a single hitch. In case you didn't read my previous report, I launched the boat Monday without first attaching one end of the rope to the trailer stanchion. By sheer luck, I got around the van soon enough to save myself the embarrassment of bidding my boat a "bon voyage" without me. The rope still was just sliding down the ramp when I got my big, fat foot on it and saved my day.

I also was lucky enough this morning to kiss my wife goodbye without having to duck a right cross aimed at my jaw. Ya' see, my wife has a notorious habit of coming up swinging when I kiss her goodbye while she's sound asleep. Of course, that's mild, compared to the trick she once pulled shortly after we were married.

We were making a trip back to Kansas to visit my folks at the time and had had to make an unexpected stop at a bed and breakfast in Pennsylvania (I think it was). The problem was that I had blown a recap tire on the ol' car (I was poor back in those days, what with child support and all) and dropped her and my son off there, while I went in search of an all-night gas station to buy another tire. Suffice it to say, I was gone for hours before finally getting to the bed and breakfast to rest my weary bones. Knowing she and the boy would be sound asleep, I very carefully put the key in the door, unlocked it, and was just starting into the room, when my frightened wife sat straight up in bed and started hollering (of all things) RAPE!!! Fortunately, I got the situation under control before anyone could call the police on my butt.

However, I do digress. Let me now get to the point of this diatribe...in short, an explanation for the one chance I took today that truly did not play out the way I had hoped. As I often do, I went back to the same areas today where I caught fish Monday, with one minor detour to start the morning. That quick detour and the first two hours of my fishing day were totally without incident. I hit 'em with a crankbait, spinnerbait (the same one I had success with Monday), and three different topwaters without finding a single taker. That left just one thing I hadn't tried yet: a weightless Senko.

I soon realized I probably should have been throwing the Senko all along, because I quickly had a couple of "iffy" bites that simply never turned into anything. But then I happened upon a point, where just as I was making my approach from downwind, I saw a bass break water...a good one, at that. When I was in range, I let go a long cast with the weightless Senko that, for me, surprisingly was nothing short of magnificent...if I do say so myself. I assure you I never could have done it a second time if I had spent the rest of the day trying.

Anyway, I felt the fish pick up the worm as soon as it hit the water...there was an ever so subtle "tick" in the line. I then took up enough of the slack I could tell the fish still had the bait and was moving with it. I watched with intense focus, as the fish ever so slowly swam around the point, and started toward open water...still with the worm in its mouth. At this point, I took a calculated chance. I wanted to see just how far the fish would go with the worm (even though standard practice calls for setting the hook as soon as you feel the fish). Accordingly, I mashed down the thumbar on my reel and lightly rested my bare thumb on the line, watching intently as the fish just kept heading to open water.

When the fish had gone several feet (and I figured he might drop it any moment), I decided it was time to reengage the thumbar, and lay fire to him. Immediately, the fish, in all its glory, went airborne and did a short tail walk, before shaking that ol' head and throwing my Senko.

Needless to say, I was disappointed that I didn't get to hold the fish, weigh it, and get a photo, but, in this case, the show I got more than made up for that disappointment...even if it was the only fish I hooked all day. The Senko worm, unfortunately, had globbed up on the end of the hook, preventing it from burying solidly in his jaw. Still, though, the image of that line moving through the water, then that moment of truth, will live in my memory for the rest of my life. I'll never know how much he weighed, but I do know he was "a dandy."

P.S. As I was leaving Albright's to head back to West Neck, I stopped and talked to a fella in a johnboat, sitting at the mouth of the cut-through. He told me he had caught two nice fish this morning in the oxbow on the left, just after you pass under the high-rise bridge heading south. If I understood him correctly, he at the time was fishing the rock wall in front of that home that sits on the far side of the oxbow. Said he caught both fish on a buzzbait. As he explained, both fish had only slapped at the bait but still had gotten hooked...one in the mouth, and the other on the outside of the mouth. According to a couple things I read online, the solution to bass slapping at a buzzbait is to add a trailer to it.