It's been a busy summer. With graduation, traveling, and apartment hunting, I've luckily had a lot to occupy my time. However, being a few weeks since I'd last picked up a rod, I started to get the itch for fishing. I admittedly became a little insufferable to the rest of my family that do not like to fish as I kept trying to sneak it into our schedules. It seemed as if I was going to come back from my trip to New Jersey seeing the Caplans without being able to fish until our flight back to Miami got canceled and we rescheduled until Thursday. While it did change things up in our expected schedule, it gave me another chance to go fishing with Larry. He already had some rods rigged up with small black or pumpkinseed plastic worms (some with a ring tail) that we simply loaded into the car and drove over to a nearby lake. It was a lake that I had fished with Ben before, so it wasn't unfamiliar. It's convenient because, as a retention pond for a neighborhood, it has low grass with fewer ticks than otherwise and there is a road right next to it where you can park. The water at the pond is apparently much lower than normal this summer, and given rain the night before the banks were a little muddy, so Larry lent me a pair of hiking boots. A worry for me on this excursion was the time of day; we could only fit fishing in at the peak of the afternoon, which is not necessarily a prime time for fish activity. That being said, this was more about getting our baits in the water and having a good time than strict fishing. Once we got to the lake, Larry showed me his retrieve, which I followed for most of the day: let the worm fall to the bottom after casting, then continuously reel in very slowly while twitching the rod tip back and forth. Bringing the worm back up at the end of my retrieves, I could see that it did in fact provide a convincing presentation. It was no surprise, then, that Larry hooked up on a bass very soon after starting. I was dealing with a tangle on my own rode, caused by the fact that the very light line was new and had sat unused in the garage for a while. Because of this he kindly offered the rod to m to finish reeling while he cut the knot on my line. I reeled it in and we took pictures with our first bass of the day. It wasn't long after that that I saw and felt fish thump my bait, and soon I hooked up on a small bass myself. It's funny how aggressive Largemouth Bass can be; sometimes small bass can go after baits as big or potentially even bigger (as I have seen) than themselves! I unhooked it and released it and we continued fishing around the bank. There was one spot as we went further along the right, near some trees and a creek, that seemed very promising. I saw sunfish in the water and casted near there, getting a few bumps but no hookups. We kept on making our way around the corner of the bank, casting out into deeper pockets in hopes of hooking into more fish. Unfortunately, nothing more was biting and it was still very hot out, so we made our way casting back along the bait to the car. Larry said he had a feeling about each of my casts, but nothing seemed to work after those first two. He said he liked my retrieve, which was pretty erratic but done exactly how he told me, so that wasn't the problem. At least we weren't skunked! It's always nice to go freshwater fishing, and using artificials for Bass for that matter, because although they are a top American gamefish, I don't often get to fish freshwater as much as I'd like. I also don't often use artificials - there's something to be said, however, for the feeling of accomplishment you get from tricking a fish into biting your plastic lure. It was nice to be back on the water and doing some casual fishing with Larry for a bit before heading back and firing up the grill.
