A five- or six-weight outfit with a forward-tapered floating line will comfortably handle well-designed deerhair and foam bugs that big bass will eagerly devour.
Myth #3: A bug must imitate what bass are eating.
Bass are opportunistic feeders. They reflexively attack anything that appears lifelike. That’s how they survive. Except in rare circumstances, bass cannot afford to be selective. The fish that just ate a fluttering moth will eagerly engulf a frog or a minnow or leech—or a twitching bass bug.
Those who sell bass bugs—and those who write books about them—want you to believe that you need dozens of imitative designs and patterns in a range of sizes and variations so that you can match every possible bass prey. If you don’t have a broken-legged female leopard-frog bug with you, they suggest ominously, how can you expect to catch a bass that’s feeding on broken-legged female leopard frogs?
Nonsense. Any bug that appears more or less alive on the water will trigger a strike from any bass that’s looking for a meal. There is no evidence whatsoever that bass notice or care about “realistic” elements such as eyes, ears, gills, fins, arms, legs, fingers or toes on bugs, although there is considerable evidence that heavily-decorated bugs snag lots of anglers.
All that stuff just adds weight and air resistance to a bass bug and makes casting it a chore. A sprig of bucktail or marabou for a tail and a couple of rubberlegs whiskers up front gives a bug plenty of enticing wiggle. You can improve most commercial bass bugs by cutting off all the adornments.
Tie on any streamlined bug you that can cast comfortably with a mid-weight rod. Gurgler-style closed-cell foam bugs, Tap’s deerhair poppers, and cork-bodied Sneaky Pete sliders all fill the bill. Make it slither and wiggle and go glug, gurgle and ploop, and it will catch every catchable bass that sees it.
Myth #4: Color matters.
Joe Brooks, whose 1947 book Bass Bug Fishing was, for the ensuing 50 years, the only one devoted exclusively to the subject, said: “East, North, South, West—it’s all the same. Yellow is by far the best color.” Other bass-bug fanatics swear by red-and-white. Every bug man, it seems, has his favorite color combination. That’s what he ties on and casts with confidence, and lo and behold, that’s what he catches all his fish on.
For subsurface flies, color no doubt matters. For floating bass bugs, color matters mainly to the angler. Most edible critters have pale bellies, so it’s probably a good idea to tie on a bass bug with a white or yellow belly. Otherwise, when a bass swims over and squints up at that creature that just plopped onto the water and has begun twitching and wiggling, all it sees is that pale belly and the movement of a silhouette against the glare of the sky. I generally use white or yellow bugs . . . because I can see those colors best, not because the fish care.
Myth #5: Big bugs catch big bass.
No doubt. But so do small bugs and medium-sized bugs. I’ve caught many 4-pound-plus largemouths while casting little panfish poppers for bluegills. Of course, if you don’t want to be bothered by small bass and panfish, you can discourage them with a big bug.
I’ve caught too many large bass to be convinced that a hungry bass of any size will pass up a well-twitched bug because it’s not big enough but, even if it were true, I won’t accept the trade-off. You need a heavyweight outfit to throw a big air resistant bug, and pretty soon that becomes work, not fun.
Myth #6: Sulky bass can be seduced, fooled or angered into striking a bass bug.
Bass, like all wild creatures, are simple survival-tuned organisms. They behave instinctively. They don’t think. They eat, they avoid predators, they seek comfort, and they reproduce. That’s about it. When we use human emotions such as “angry” or “sulky” or “smart” or even “hungry,” we’re describing their behavior, not explaining it.
Bass eat what appears edible to them based on their previous experiences with eating, plus whatever instincts that come with their DNA. More often than not, they eat whatever is available and easy to catch. But sometimes they are not interested in eating. At those times, they will ignore vulnerable frogs and minnows and dragonflies, and they will surely ignore bass bugs, no matter how seductively you manipulate them.
Myth #7: You can’t fish a bass bug too slowly.
This hoary myth persists as the conventional wisdom on how to retrieve bass bugs. Joe Brooks wrote: “The slower the retrieve, the better. . . . When [the bug] hits, let it stay where it is from one-half to almost a minute. Then give it a slight twitch with your rod tip, or even pop it. Let it stay motionless again for half a minute. Another twitch or pop.”
Other experts recommend lighting a cigarette after casting a bug upon the water and smoking it down to the filter before giving the bug its first twitch. Others suggest eating a sandwich.
The same bass-bug experts inevitably follow up this advice by telling you to speed it up when the slow-motion retrieve doesn’t work.
Nowadays, the real bass experts are the tournament pros whose income depends on catching fish. When they use surface lures, they generally cast ’em out and chug ’em back. If the relatively fast retrieve didn’t work best, you can be sure they’d slow it down.
The fact is, sometimes one type of retrieve works better than others, for reasons only the bass know. Start with fairly fast retrieve, because you can cover more water that way. If you’re not catching fish, slow it down and vary the cadence—twitch-pause-twitch, or, twitch-twitch-GLUG, pause, etc.—until the bass tell you what they like.
Myth #8: Don’t give up on a good-looking spot.
Joe Brooks advised, “If you feel reasonably sure that a bass is in a certain spot, work it carefully. Throw your bug back time and again. I’ve often cast twenty times over a fish before he took.”
The problem is, what looks good to you may not look good to the fish, and while you’re investing the time it takes to make twenty casts over a barren piece of water, you’re not fishing all the other water that may be more productive. Usually a hungry bass will hit your bug the first time he sees it, and if he’s not hungry, there’s not much you can do to change his mind.
However, bass rarely move far from their lairs to strike a bug, so be sure you cover all the bassy nooks and crannies. Hit every edge and pothole in a bed of lily pads. Twitch your bug past the tip, both sides, and the base of a fallen tree. Drop it against all sides of a boulder
After that, no matter how good that water looks, move on.
Myth #9: If you miss a strike, change flies and rest the fish before trying again.
If a bass follows your bug, or swirls behind it, or strikes at it and misses (which usually means you failed to hook him), you know he’s interested. Don’t let him off the hook. The bug you’ve got tied on, the one he came after, is the one that got his attention, and there’s no reason to change it.
If you use a strip strike—as you should—leave your bug right there. Imagine that bass looking at it, trying to decide whether to try again. Give it a twitch. Make it glug. Start it moving. If he doesn’t hit again, cast it back immediately to where he was originally lying.
However, if you felt any resistance when he hit the first time—if your pricked him, however lightly—forget about it. Bass don’t grow into adults by ignoring such warning signs.
Myth #10: Bass bugs only work in low light.
Traditionally, bass-bug fishing is a dawn and dusk sport, and there’s no doubt that those are the magic times on the water. Like most fish, bass don’t like bright sunshine. But as long as the shallow-water temperatures are comfortable for them, you can catch bass on the surface any time of day. Concentrate on shady areas—the eastern shoreline in the morning, the western in the afternoon. Cast close to the bank, under overhanging bushes and trees, among reeds and lily pads, alongside boulders and drowned timber. Anyplace that provides a little shade is a potential bassy spot.
So the best time to go bass-bug fishing is . . . whenever you can. Simple as that.
28
Trout Eyes
T
he Bull Shoals dam was holding back water, and the White River was running low and slow and clear. Local trout maestro Wayne Reed had led John Barr and me through some woods to a classic nymph run where a long glassy pool narrowed and spilled through a cluster of boulders. Wayne put me at the head of the run, and I immediately began catching 10-to-14-inch rainbows, drifting a Pheasant Tail and a Copper John. For an hour or so my strike indicator kept twitching and dipping, and I was content.
Then, typically, I got itchy. Overhead, the Arkansas sun blazed high and bright in a cloudless sky, and upstream the slow flat pool began whispering “sight fishing” and “big fish” into my ear. Seductive, irresistible words.
Downstream, Wayne and John were laughing about something. I didn’t want to hurt Wayne’s feelings. He had, after all, brought us here and set me up on this hot hole. But I wanted to go hunting.
I reeled up, tugged at the visor of my cap, and began creeping along the edge of the pool.
It took a few minutes for my eyes to see and my brain to interpret what they were seeing, but pretty soon I began spotting trout in the shallow water along the inside bend of the pool. Rarely could I make out an entire fish. Mostly it was a slash of crimson, or the horizontal line of a trout’s back, or the angle of a caudal fin, or the sideways dart of a head, or the wink of a white mouth, or a shadow on the rocky bottom.
But all I saw were small fish like I’d been catching on nymphs. I’d done that. The White was famous for its giant rainbows and browns. I wanted one of them.
I lost track of time as I focused hard and expectantly on every square foot of water, stalking like a heron one slow step at a time. When I finally paused, straightened my back, and glanced behind me, I saw that I’d moved several hundred yards. I’d reached the head of the pool, where the current pushed against a ledge, then curled and spilled between two large boulders.
I looked so hard it felt as if my eyes were going to pop out and, after a few minutes, I saw what I’d been hunting for. It was holding near the bottom in the cushion behind the nearest boulder: A large, greenish, ghostly shape. A trout. A big trout.
It was a tricky lie, the kind of sight-fishing challenge I love. The eddy behind the boulder wanted to drag my nymphs away before they sank to the trout’s depth. I tried drifting them right along the edge of the current seam, hoping that the fish would dart out to grab one of them. But it didn’t. I tried dropping them in the soft cushion right against the boulder with a lot of slack line, but some hidden current would suck them out into the quick water. I moved upstream, reached over the boulder with my rod, and let my nymphs slide down the other side. I added weight, changed flies. Nothing worked.
In the swirling eddy I sometimes lost sight of the fish, but when I shifted my position and got the angle of the sun just right, I spotted it again. All my efforts hadn’t spooked it. It was holding right where I’d first seen it.
Maybe it just wasn’t in an eating mood. Or maybe it was eating something that I wasn’t imitating. Most likely I just wasn’t getting my flies to it so that they looked natural and good to eat.
I reeled up and found a rock to sit on while I pondered the situation. Maybe I’d catch that fish and maybe I wouldn’t. But I wasn’t about to give up.
A few minutes later Wayne came along. “How’s it going?”
“I’m having fun.” I pointed with my rod tip. “There’s a really big trout behind that boulder, and I can’t catch it. You can’t beat that for fun.”
“Sight fishing, huh?”
I nodded. “Why don’t you try for that fish.”
“Nope. You found it, it’s yours. Show me.”
I got up and looked. The trout hadn’t moved. I pointed. “Right there. See it?”
He shifted his position, tugged at the brim of his hat, adjusted his sunglasses. “Hm. No . . . Wait a minute. Okay. Yeah. I think I see what you see.”
“Give it a try,” I said. “I’d love to see you catch that trout.”
* * *
Colorado guide Sandy Moore introduced me to the mesmerizing intensity of sight-fishing for trout one October morning almost twenty years ago. I haven’t been the same since.
We were fishing the Frying Pan, hoping to tie into one of that river’s famously piggy rainbows. I was high-sticking a mysis shrimp imitation through a deep slot and having no luck at it when Sandy came along. He watched me for a few minutes, then pointed and said, “Look. There you go. See it?”
I looked where he was pointing. “What?” I said. “I don’t see anything.”
He blew out a breath. “Right there. Look, man.”
I shrugged. “I am looking. Sorry.”
“Here.” He took off his sunglasses and handed them to me. “Try these.”
I took off my glasses and put his on. Suddenly I could distinguish every pebble on the stream bottom. “My glasses are polarized,” I said. “What’s with these?”
“Amber. Maximizes contrast.”
“Awesome. I don’t see any fish, though.”
He sighed. “See that square boulder? Look two feet upstream and then one foot to the left. Just behind that rock with the white on it. Nice fish.”
I looked hard, and suddenly I saw it. First I saw a crimson slash. Then the shape of its head materialized. Then the curve of its belly, then its wavering tail. A big fat rainbow.
“Now that I see it,” I said to Sandy, “I don’t understand how I couldn’t see it before. It’s obvious.”
“You’ve got to find your trout eyes,” he said. “Like bonefishing. It takes a day or two on the flats before what the guides call your bonefish eyes kick in. You need the glasses for vision. Polarized for the glare, amber for the contrast. And it’s ideal if you have an overhead sun and you can climb a bank or a rock and look down into the water, and it helps if the surface is smooth. Even so, just being able to see isn’t enough. Your brain has to recognize a trout, to understand what it is your eyes are seeing. You hardly ever see a whole fish. You look for a line or a color or a shadow or a movement. Some little anomaly that isn’t a rock or a stick. After you’ve done that a few times, those little trout clues get filed away in your brain. Okay, so now that you see it, go catch that fish.”
I adjusted my position and drifted my shrimp imitation onto the trout’s nose. It was intense, knowing that my fly was approaching a large trout, anticipating the take, then feeling the let-down when the fly drifted past.
On the fourth or fifth cast I saw its head dart to the side. Instinctively, I lifted my rod and felt its weight and, a few minutes later, Sandy netted a 19-inch rainbow trout that was shaped like a watermelon.
I patted my chest and blew out a breath. “I thought I was gonna have a heart attack,” I said. “I swear that was the most fun I’ve ever had catching a trout.”
For my remaining days on the Frying Pan I cast only to specific fish that I had located. I spent a lot more time stalking along the banks looking into the water—hunting—than I did actually fishing. The harder I hunted, the more fish I began to see. Locating one of those anomalies that translated to “trout,” estimating its size, watching the way it was feeding, planning a strategy, creeping into position, and then drifting a fly to an actual specific fish was an entirely new and utterly absorbing form of fishing.
Nothing, of course, is fool-proof. I’ve encountered many conditions and water types where sight fishing was impossible. Sometimes my trout eyes and my brain don’t communicate clearly. Sometimes I just can’t see the trout I know are there.
And sometimes I see trout that aren’t there.
* * *
Wayne peered into the water, then shook his head. “I can’t catch that trout.”
“Sure you can.”
He grinned at me. “Well,” he said, “if I’m seeing what you’re seeing, that trout ain’t a trout.”
I looked again, and after a minute I saw it. My trout was a green-backed fish-shaped weed. It had a tail and a head and, I’d swear, gills and a dorsal fin. But, okay, it was a
weed.
I shrugged. “Wishful thinking, I guess. No wonder I couldn’t catch it.”
“So,” said Wayne, “how much time did you waste, trying to catch that big old weed?”
“Waste?” I said. “I didn’t waste a second. I was having a wonderful time trying to catch that weed before you came along and spoiled it.”
Epilogue: A Birthday Trout
The last time my father and I fished together was on his 85th birthday. What had been, for most of my life, a fishing partnership that took us all over the northeast for everything that swam in fresh or salt water, had devolved to this: A ceremonial once-a-year September canoe float on a serpentine woodland trout stream a mile from his house.
We parked at the iron bridge, as we always did. I toted the canoe to the water, and Dad carried the paddles and fishing gear.
“You take the bow,” I said. “I’m going to paddle.”
“No,” he said. “You fish.”
“But it’s your birthday.”
“Right,” he said. “So I get to do what I want. I want to paddle.”
We’d been carrying on this same argument for about fifty years, and it always turned out the same.
A canoe paddle was still a wand in Dad’s gnarly hands. He pushed us upstream against the stream’s slow currents, pausing without comment when a deadfall or undercut bank or shaded hole came within casting range, telling me by how he aimed the canoe where he wanted me to drop my dry fly. After forty years together, no words needed.
I wasn’t getting any strikes. Not surprising. Objectively, this wasn’t much of a trout stream. They stocked it with brookies in the spring, but the stream ran low and warm in the summer, and we figured most of the trout either got caught or migrated down to the lake or died. Fishing was always pretty slow in September.
Trout Eyes Page 16