Bass

It's summer. Summer is my favorite season. The days are long, the surface water at the lake is warm and clear (usually) and the days aren't horrible weather wise. Overcast days in the high 60's are my favorites. Another one of my favorite things about summer - good bass fishing.

I've been graced with living close to one of the best bass fishing lakes in northwest Oregon, and recently actually moving much closer than I'd lived before. I can be at the boat launch 20 minutes after leaving my driveway. This means that I've been fishing every chance I get, which is once a week. I've hit the lake up just about every week now for the last six weeks. Oh, it's been open since March - but my schedule hasn't allowed for me to get out until about six weeks ago.

For the last three weeks, I've been focusing a lot of my time fishing on bass - and we're lucky in that my lake has good populations of both largemouth and smallmouth - and some of those fish are record class (something like 8 state record smallmouth have been produced by this lake - whereas most anglers would think of the Columbia and Willamette rivers, or maybe the John Day river when they think of smallmouth fishing in northern Oregon - which I'm happy with.)

I had to pare down on some of my fishing tackle about a year or so ago due to getting laid off and needing funds, as well as moving a couple times since then. Now we're nicely settled in a new home and I've got good income again - I can rebuild some of my arsenal - which has included the purchase of three new bassin' sticks with a couple more planned later on.

My first new bass rod purchase about a month ago was one of Okuma's "ReFlexions" rods - the ReFlexions are a series of one-piece bass rods in spinning and casting flavors that go from a 6' light power fast action rod to a 7' medium heavy casting rod. I've had their 6'6" medium heavy rod before and loved it -but it was one of the rods I had to liquidate (along with my much loved Abu Garcia Revo SL reel) after getting laid off. I picked up a new 6'6" medium power spinning rod that I put an Abu Garcia Cardinal spinning reel on and loaded it up with 30lb Suffix braid and a Berkley mono leader. 

I had one main goal for this rod - smallmouth. This is a perfect setup for fishing tube jigs and soft plastics for smallies. My first outing with this was rewarded by a couple nice chunky smallies - so I'm pleased as punch.

The water has warmed up a bit more since that outing and the bass have spawned (large and smallmouth) and are in their post-spawn feeding mode.  My casting rods have seen a lot more action the last couple trips out - as I've switched up from the soft plastics to fishing mostly crankbaits.

One bass rod that I have, that will never get sold, is a one piece G Loomis GL2 6' medium power fast action with a Shimano Curado reel. This was a rod I inherited from my late brother in law, a combo that my wife purchased him. It'll be the last rod I'd ever even think of parting with.

I did recently pick up another casting rod - because too much of my time has been spent switching from deep runners to shallow running cranks - most of my fish lately have been coming out of the deeper waters along ledges - mostly 8-15 feet deep but sometimes those fish are in 6 feet of water, or they're up in the shallows in the late afternoons / early evenings and so I'm pitching cranks right up to the bank. So I got myself another Okuma ReFlexions rod - this time the 6'6" medium action casting rod and a Diawa Leguna reel to match it. This one I filled with 20lb Tuf Line XP braid. The Okuma is a bit stiffer and a heavier power than the loomis, despite both being rated as fast action medium power rods - so I decided to use the thinner braid with this reel and throw the deep runners with it. The thin line (20lb Tuf Line has the diameter of 6lb Berkley mono) will offer less resistance in the water, and let my plugs run deeper than 10lb mono would. The Loomis rod will be setup with the shallow running cranks, and I currently have 10lb Berkley mono spooled up on it.

My other recent bass rod purchase was a Wright & McGill S-Curve gen 2 fly rod, in 7'10" 8 weight flavor. THe 7'10" length makes it legal to use in bass tournaments, but that's not why I picked it - the short length keeps the casts below the overhanging trees I've had to deal with in some of my favorite bassin' spots, since the lake is currently in it's high-water spring/early summer depth. In a month I'm sure it'll be 20 feet lower, and a 9 foot rod would be fine. But then, in a month the fish will probably be in deeper water and I'll have to chase them with sinking lines anyway, so rod length won't matter that much.

I over-lined the fly rod with a #9 line, because most of my casts will be short and to the point - so the heavier line will load the rod better on short casts. 


Since the lake has been pretty clear, I've been throwing 2-3 inch natural colored crankbaits mostly for the last couple weeks. The fish have responded very well to this. I've mixed it up and tried the outlandish neon colors, the fire-tiger patterns, and crawfish cranks in varied shades, and they have almost wholely preferred a silver sided crank. Probably because there's a lot of trout in this lake, along with lots of newly hatched baby bass, baby crappie, and baby bluegill to forage on.

As you can see from the pictures above and below - the water is nice and clear and the fish have just finished up spawning. 

 

Most of these guys were hiding right along the break line of a ledge in the deep water, waiting to pounce on some little guy dumb enough to wander out of the safety of the shallows over into the dark water of an old creek channel or drop off into open water of the main lake.

I've taken both largemouth and smallmouth from these places.

I won't get to get out and chase them this coming week - today (June 23) marks the 6th anniversary of my marriage to my lovely bride, and we're dropping our little man off with Grandma and taking a day and a half to go to the Oregon coast for some much needed mommy-daddy alone times. While there is a possibility of a fishing rod sneaking it's way into the car (we have to drive past some beautiful trout waters, and our hotel is 2 blocks from a nice lake filled with trout and largemouth) - I'm not sure I'll get to use that rod much.

When I do get to hit the lake up again in two weeks, I'm hoping I don't come back to it to find the water 15 feet lower, and the fish pushed off to different holding places. My depth finder is broken (somehow the transducer cable got cut after a recent trip - and I know it wasn't on the motor prop because the cut portion was inside the boat. I think it got pinched by one of the batteries. I'm going to try to solder it back up - but I might have to bite the bullet and get a new transducer now, since the cable is integral to the transducer itself) and it makes finding the ledges and structure much easier.

Of course, I need to check a lottery ticket to see if I won that 127 million dollar powerball jackpot. If I did, I"ll be hitting the water a lot sooner, in a bigger nicer boat. Cross your fingers for me, pretty please?

I will be writing some gear reviews on the new Okuma and Wright & McGill rods in coming posts. Check back soon.

Initium

Initium:  Latin for "start" ; "beginning" ; "commencement"; "origin"

This is a new "initium" for me. I previously authored a blog for a couple years called "Floggin' Water" - but I hit a point where I just didn't want to do it anymore. We all get there. Sometimes writing feels more like a job, rather than a joy. That wouldn't necessarily be so bad, if I were getting paid or otherwise compensated - but, not being a paid writer, I write for joy rather than as a job. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to get paid to write. But I don't. I get paid to tow cars.

Another reason I ended "Floggin' Water" was because it was very fishing centric - and sometimes I didn't feel like talking about fishing - and toward the end, it really drifted away from fishing. I felt like I was loosing the focus of the blog, and didn't want to alienate the readers too much - the handful that there were anyway.

I've stayed somewhat active on some local fishing forums, and lately I've felt the pull to write more - because there seems to be a new wave of users and people looking for help. Guess it's in my nature to want to help folks - and help them learn. Best way to do that has been writing fishing tutorials and exchanging PM's - but I hate having to copy and edit those tutorials to fit the different boards. So what am I going to do? I'm starting anew, and thus Mark's Outdoors is born.  Initium.

In this place, I am going to write about my outdoor adventures, past and present, and try to share what I've learned over those adventures. Use what you can, discard what you can't, and share better ways if you know them.

Here, I can say what I want to say, how I want to say it without being moderated, censored, or banned. Sometimes I use profanity (okay, I use a lot in my daily speech, at least with certain company) and sometimes I may be a bit sexist, or tell a dirty joke, or otherwise say things that may offend some sensitive folks sensibilities. I am quite opinionated about things I'm passionate about. Sometimes I'll go off on a political rant. That means about half of the potential readers will get pissed off and call me crazy or worse. Whatever.  If you don't like it, there's a back button, or you can click the "X" in the upper right hand corner of your browser and I will go away. The internet is magic like that!

If you find something useful - please use it and share it. Maybe share the URL with your friends, family, doctor, dentist, or strangers.Click the like button or follow button or whatever.

If you email me - don't expect immediate response, but I won't forget about you. Unless you wind up my spam folder. If you do, I'm sorry. I check spam once in a while, but usually just hit "empty" on that folder without reading it.

If you want to flame me - don't expect a response. This is my house, my rules. I plan on moderating comments, and people that want to be a disrespectful assclown will get booted. You can read my writings, you can spit, spat, rant, and swear at your computer all you want. But the other magical thing about the internet, is that I don't have to read, or allow others to read, your crap on my site. I can click "delete" and you disappear. And I will, unless you can make your point in a civil manner. I can be uncivilized all I want in my writings - double standards can and will apply. And for you Constitutional scholars out there - remember that the Bill of Rights and all those Amendments apply to interactions between the government and the people - not between private parties. As much as I'd like to be ruler of the world (and if I do become such, you're still stuck with my rules) - we're all private parties here so if I censor you, too bad. That's life and the wonderfulness of the internet again.

Now that I've said a whole lot about stuff that's not really outdoor related - let me assure you that soon you can read about some bass fishing adventures, there will be installments of a fly fishing primer for fly fishing noobs, and some articles about gear.

Thanks for reading - tell your friends about it.

-Mark