Bullfrogs, Bugs & a Boat Ride

Eli and I did manage to catch a bass yesterday afternoon, but that didn't really matter. More significantly, we heard bullfrogs croaking as the sun began sinking, saw a spider enjoying a really good catch, and took the johnboat for a lap around the pond.

We both croaked back at the frogs, although I'm not convinced they were impressed. Eli, who is big fan of bugs and somewhat of a collector, wanted to rob the spider of it's dinner, but I vetoed that notion. In the boat, I did the bulk of the paddling, but Eli took control while I was untangling some line. He also did a fine job of paddling us to the shore when it was time to call it a night.

I actually had a work objective for our little evening outing. Eli helped me with a video that I'll share after it is posted. More valuable than my work or catching fish, though, was a bit of one-on-one time outdoors on a summer evening.

Fish Before the Storm

I'm out of sequence with reports from recent fishing days because I got behind on blog posts, but a few days ago, Asher and I enjoyed a quick afternoon outing and had fun catching some bass and bluegills before a big evening rain and thunder not far from us pushed us off the pond.

Late in the afternoon, we decided to slip out after dinner, if it wasn't already raining. From the radar, I had my doubts, but I planned as if we would go and gathered a bit of gear when I had the chance. It was one of those patchy summer systems that was hard to gauge, so even as we got in the car, I wondered whether we'd have to turn around when we got to the pond, which is only four miles from our house.

No raindrops when we arrived, to we grabbed our junk and launched the johnboat. The pond is pretty small, so it's reasonable to retreat when needed. We only got in about 2/3 of a lap before the rain hit, and when it came, it came hard in a hurry, and we had to scurry. In an hour or so of fishing, though, we caught several bass and bluegills, including a bass of a couple of pounds that Asher spotted cruising and cast a few feet ahead of to draw the strike.

We were across the pond when the rain came, so it got up pretty wet. We returned home soggy but smiling.

Downwind & Half an Oar Short

With the wind blowing up the lake, Nathaniel decided to get his rowing out of the way first, rowing to a downlake spot he wanted to investigate and then working one bank back toward the truck while letting the wind do most of the work.

Good plan, but things don't always go as planned.

About 100 feet shy of the spot, one of the two-piece oars came apart, and we both watched helplessly as the blade end sank out of sight. An oar with no blade is as useful as no oar, and one good oar in a oarlock is as useful as zero oars, unless you just want to spin, which we didn't. So the lone oar became a long, heavy, awkward paddle with no t-grip.

We were almost to the spot, and wind had shifted a bit and was crossing the lake, so Nathaniel decided to complete the quest. He'd still work us back along the bank and fish, just without the aid of the wind at his back.

If you fish, you might guess the next part. While we were fishing that spot, the wind finished shifting and picked up a bit, so by the time were ready to work the other way, it was blowing steadily, straight down the lake, and away from the truck.

Nathaniel soon learned just how inefficient it is to use an oar to paddle a johnboat into the wind. Each oar/paddle stroke moved the boat slightly forward but turned it more, and switching sides robbed distance back because of the wind. He eventually came up with an awkward sculling-type stroke off he back of the boat that worked a little better than traditional paddling (see video). I took the paddle once just to keep us from loosing too much while he rested momentarily, but I was even less efficient working backward from the johnboat's front seat.

We made it back to the truck in OK time, but Nathaniel only ended up fishing about 10 minutes while we were out there. Sounded like a good plan!

Capt. Eli

Eli, 5, running the boat for his brother Asher and me.

Eli enjoys to going fishing. There's no doubt about that. However, I sort of think he likes paddling the johnboat around the lake even more than he likes to try to catch fish. He's gotten pretty good at it, too. For a not-quite-6-year-old, Eli shows surprising command of the boat, especially considering that he works from the middle and has to move a couple of steps to switch paddling sides.

It used to be that when I handed Eli a paddle I was resolving to happily cast from wherever the boat happened to spin, which effectively meant not really fishing for a while. I didn't mind that at the time, but I have to admit that I kind of like him easing Asher and me along a bank so we can cast for bluegills and bass. In truth, I like it better than him slinging a hook past my nose when he casts from the center of the boat!

Yesterday wasn't a big fish catching day. We got a few bluegills in one mid-day pond lap. A couple of them came with Capt. Eli paddling, so I'm giving him guide credit for those fish!

Birthday Bass & Bluegills

Birthdays and fishing often go together around my house, as I fairly commonly take my children to a nearby pond for a while on their birthdays. Yesterday we sort of turned things around, with Nathaniel, my 16-year-old-son, taking me to the pond. We fished out of his johnboat and he ran it. I just sat in front cast. He also dragged a canoe down the hill and launched it in the next pond down so we could make a lap down there and hit some different water. (Bass in photo came from the middle pond.)

We enjoyed perfect fall weather yesterday, and the fish were even kind enough to join the celebration. We caught a dozen or so fish, most of which were bluegills, in a couple of hours of pond play.

I also spent a bit of my birthday with my wife at Lawrenceville Bass Pro Shops, picking out some bug-tying stuff that was a present from Sarah, my oldest daughter. I hope to wrap a bit of the new stuff on hooks today and use it to catch trout tomorrow, but maybe that's a different story!

Georgia Ice Fish

We really did have to pull our fish up through holes a hole in the ice.

Granted, we weren't standing on the ice, but were in Nathaniel's johnboat, but to get to the area where we usually catch fish during the winter, we had to crunch a little path through a thin coat of ice with the boat. Nathaniel then jockeyed the boat back and forth just a little to open the hole enough that we could fish off the side of the bait, and we presented worm-tipped Lindy ice jigs vertically, just as we might have if we had been further north.

No. It wasn't true ice fishing, but I'd say it's about as close as we'll ever come n Georgia!

Beaver Pond Changing?

A couple of months ago Nathaniel and I moved his johnboat from the banks of the beaver pond where it normally resides to another pond on the same property. Rain had been a bit scarce and the beaver pond was really low. Already shallow and loaded with stumps, it was really too low to get the boat in and out very well or to fish effectively. The other pond is man-made and deeper, so while it too was down, it remained fine to access and fish.

It has rained a lot here lately. In fact, our rivers have surged near flood stage a couple of times, and they remain well above normal levels, and the other pond is actually a little above normal full pool now. With that in mind, Nathaniel wanted to return his boat to the beaver pond, which is more remote and prettier than the other pond and our preferred place to fish and to keep the boat. And once we moved it, we figured we could make a quick lap to see if the fish were biting.

So we rode over there on Wednesday, loaded the boat in the back of my truck, drove to the beaver pond and slid the boat into the water. As we looked at all the cover out of the water, though, we realized that it hadn't come up at all. We also realized that it would be seriously tough to get across a couple of flats with both of us in the boat and that the wind would blow us against a lot of stumps, were we to try to fish. After studying things a bit, we re-loaded the boat in my truck and toted right back to where we'd gotten it a half hour earlier.

I was a little disappointed to not get to fish a bit. More significantly, though, I'm concerned that our little engineer friends might have abandoned the dam they built or done some remodeling and that our beaver pond might have changed permanently. I hope it's a more complex watershed issue than I can wrap my little brain around and that some day soon the water will just be back where it was. However, it being so low when we've had so much rain doesn't make me very optimistic.

I sure would miss fishing in that beaver pond.

Shopping for Bass

No amazing deals on the pond today, and the  fish didn't even bite especially well. We managed a few, though, and with or without them, I'd have sure rather been out in the johnboat than near any malls on the Friday after Thanksgiving.

We fished the same pond as a couple of days ago, with a friend and me in his boat and Nathaniel and Asher in Nathaniel's boat. While the wind wasn't howling like it did on Tuesday and the water had gone down some, it was still quite muddy. Even black or chartreuse baits disappeared less than a foot beneath the surface.

The two fish I caught both hit a spinnerbait with gold Colorado blades that sent out a fair amount of flash and thump. Both were tight to the bank, and I'm guessing I pretty much landed the bait on their heads. Nathaniel also caught one bass on a flashy metallic-colored jerkbait, fishing it really slowly and hooked and lost one other (the biggest of the morning, of course) on the same bait and presentation.

Pond Play

It's tough for Nathaniel and me to resist a quick trip to the pond on a nice afternoon, and we rarely regret the decision to go.

Results vary a surprising amount from day to day, considering we fish the same couple of small ponds most of the time. Sometimes the action is great; occasionally they are really tough. Typically we land at least a few fish and miss a few others.

Saturday sort of fell in the middle. We probably spent an hour and a half fishing, making one lap around the perimeter of the beaver pond, plus a pass through the center, and I believe we caught seven or eight fish. All except one were bass. I caught a single chunky bluegill on a Bobby Garland Stroll'R. The most productive single bait, which Nathaniel was throwing, was a 1/4-ounce BOOYAH Buzzbait.

Most days, one good lap around the pond is enough to get the fish sort of used to us being there and the bite slows. The beaver ponds holds out a little longer than the other ponds because it has cover throughout it and the fish are as likely to be in the middle as on the bank most days.

Fortunately, the bite typically wanes about the same time as I get ready to abandon the johnboat seat and to head back home to settle in for the evening. I'd keep fishing if the fish were really hammering our baits, but an hour or two typically is just enough to make for a very nice outing on a summer afternoon.

Circle of Success with Soft Plastics

It took two casts from the bank to confirm that 3-inch YUM Money Craw nose hooked on a 2/O Daiichi Bleeding Bait Circle Hook would catch at least one fish today. Within a few minutes of launching the boat Nathaniel and I could tell that it would work pretty well.

I already knew from a few days ago that pond conditions were right for fish to attack a Money Craw, rigged weightless and swam steadily. Last week I used an offset worm hook and rigged it weedless. However, I missed a lot of solid strikes, so that made me wonder about the idea of rigging it open with a circle hook. I've nose-hooked the same circle hooks in soft-plastics before with excellent success, but I wasn't positive how the Money Craw would swim or whether the pond's many stumps would cause problem.

As it turned out, the bait swam perfectly, my hook-up ratio was vastly improved, and I only snagged stumps twice. The bait also stayed in better condition than it did with the worm hook, when I had to set the hook hard, and it repeatedly slid down the hook. We fished for an hour or more today, and I caught several bass, but I only used one Money Craw.

One snagged stump actually provided one of the outing's most fun moments. I was snagged and Nathaniel was navigating the johnboat toward the stump I was on. Suddenly I felt tugging and I reacted with a hookset. Of course, I missed the fish because hooksets don't work well with circle hooks, but Nathaniel had been looking in the water at the time, watching my bait so he could push the boat closer, and he saw a bass swim up and snatch the Money Craw right off the stump!

Toting the Boat

 

Nathaniel and I realized on Saturday that with the pickup truck gone, I'm going to have to get some sort of trailer if he and I are going to take his johnboat places to fish together. We had hoped we could tote it atop the Expedition or at least get it on top of the family van (which is shorter). Turns out the boat is just a little too heavy for Nathaniel and me to control sufficiently and to get it atop either vehicle without breaking anything (including ourselves). Of course, lacking an open truck bed for mulch and other stuff like that, a trailer would be a mighty good thing to own anyway!

 

We'll have to figure out something. There are several little lakes around here that Nathaniel and I would really enjoy exploring together, and his johnboat would be perfect for the job if we could only get it there!

A Boat of his Own

Nathaniel had been hoping to find a johnboat that he could afford to buy, and his siblings had even been praying that he would find such a boat. Well, God did better than to provide a boat that Nathaniel could afford to buy. This week, Nathaniel was GIVEN a boat that is exactly what he was hoping to find. It's big enough be stable and to hold three people but small enough that it can still be carried in the back of my truck. He has replaced the seats an added rod holders and has a few other plans in mind for it, but we'll be fishing from Nathaniel's own boat very soon. God provides!