Bass Fishing With Ben

  My cousin Ben and I had been planning to go fishing for a few weeks by now. We finally found a good opportunity to catch some Bass at a pond near Egg Harbor in New Jersey, and set out after dinner during the evening. Ben, who fished the lake relatively often over the last few months, brought black small rubber worms as the lures of choice. Until today I had never used them before, but seeing as how he has experience at the lake, I took his word for it.

    The lures worked perfectly. Sure enough, on his very first cast, a Bass took his lure once it hit the water. He reeled it in for the first catch of the day, and we knew right then that we were going to have a good day of fishing. At the first part of the bank we fished, the Bass seemed to take everything we threw at them. We were hooking up on most of our casts to start off. After only about eight minutes, we had caught about five fish combined. As we kept on going, the fish seemed to stop biting for a bit and we walked over to another part of the bank.

    Ben caught two at the other spot, meanwhile my casts weren’t going nearly as far as they had before. Only after a while did I check my reel to see that there was a small tangle, restricting the range of my casts. I may not have been catching anything for a bit, but at least I came away with the lesson to remember to frequently check my gear.

    We walked over to the first part of the bank to see if we could close out the trip with a few more Bass. Ben said that the best way to retrieve the worms was, while keeping the rod tip down, to let it fall to the bottom after casting, then jerking and reeling up the slack. Not a slow retrieve, but not too fast. Enough to aggravate the fish. I told him that the tactic reminded me of the aggressive Peacock Bass we have in South Florida.

    We were able to catch three more fish at the last spot before packing up and heading out. We caught 10 fish in total, Ben with 6 and me with 4. All in all, it was a great trip to which we had both looked forward for a while, and it was one that I will not soon forget. It was great to just hang out and catch up by the lake while reeling in some Largemouth Bass.