Fish Bait
Got to thinking about this tonight for the
simple reason that I talked to Stanley
Bait. It's kind of hard to catch a fish
without it. Om a fishing pole I should say.
I've caught lots of fish over the years without using a hook or line. I have
built fish traps for every thing from perch to salmon. I've used sticks to stir
up the mud in the swamp and picked the catfish up when they came to the top to
breath. I've gotten lots of different fish using a speargun and even got some
with dynamite. But, tonight I'm
remembering some of the weird things we've put on hooks trying to entice a fish
dinner into a pan.
We started out pretty well the same as any
other kid using worms I mean, really, who hasn't? The worked great for catching
most anything that swam in the water down home.
My first move away from worms was because of
my Uncle Henry. He used to take me fishing all the time when I was a kid and
from the start I had to learn to fish the way he did. He lived in Arizona and would take me along to his two favorite spot,
Salt River and Roosevelt
Lake Ariz. Okla.
Minnows are also good bait. I've used them
in Okla. and Ariz Minn.
I'm not even going to list all the grasshoppers
and assorted bugs I've stuck on a hook. Both Stanley and I always carried hooks
line and sinkers with us any time went out in the woods but we seldom had bait
so it was just a matter of what ever we could find. I will say that we had lots
of meals by using whatever kind of bugs we could find.
I think my next move up was to artificial
bait. I got really hooked on fishing bass tournaments for awhile and you
couldn’t use any kind of live bait during one. I ended up spending lots, and I
do mean LOTS of money buying artificial lures. Not that they really helped me
that much. I tried every thing I could think of to make a go of those bass
tournaments I drove everyone else asking questions. I bought every
"hot" plug I could find. I followed other guys around the lakes to
see where they were fishing I even tried to push myself into their fishing
spots which is something I never would have done with any other kind of
fishing. I finally had to own up to the fact that no matter how hard I tried I
just wasn't as good at it as the other guys were. So what did i do? might as
well come clean, I'm too old now to be lying, I cheated. Not proud of it but I
was just so tired of losing! The absolute best I ever did on any tournament was
100% because I cheated. I had been out half the first day of a two day
tournament. I had tried every plug I had in my tackle box in every way I could
think of and hadn't even put one fish in the boat. I was sitting a hundred yards
or so off the bank, dejected and feeling sorry for myself when I happened to
notice a big swirl over close to the bank. I was sure what it was but since I
wasn't doing anything else I kicked the trolling motor in gear and eased over
that way to see what it was. I didn't have to get very close to see that it was
a huge bass. I watched it for a minute and realized it had to be a female and
the swirls I had seen was her using her tail to prepare a nest.
Female bass, for the most part are bigger
than the males but their harder to catch, in less their spawning! If you can
find the right plug and get it close to her she will tend to attach anything
that gets close to her nest. I got all excited, thinking I may have a chance at
doing good but no matter what I threw at her she would not bite. I even tried
moving up and down the bank because while I was casting to the first one I had
noticed that there were several more preparing nests along the same shore line.
I spent a couple of hours tossing everything I had at them but no matter what I
did I just could not get them to bite.
I was back to just sitting in the boat,
feeling sorry for myself again when I noticed the first bass I had seen was
making her nest right under a willow tree. i honestly don't know what made me
think of it. maybe it because she seemed to come to the top of the water or
maybe it was the way the willow limbs moved in the wind but I dug down in the
bottom of my tackle box and came up with a box of dry flies.
I didn't know for sure if it was legal to
fly fish for bass. I do know I had never heard of anyone doing it. I mean, they
were artificial bait so they should be legal, right? Maybe, but truthfully, I
knew up front that what was going through my pea brain was NOT legal or
ethical. I eased over to the willow tree and attached a monofilament line to
the end of the limb. I tied a dry fly to the end at a point where it would just
skim across the water when the wind moved the branch. As if that set wasn't bad
enough, I put in half a dozen more of them down the bank.
I headed back out in the lake. Close enough
to be able to see my lines but far enough out so that if anyone saw me they
would assume I was casting to the bank. it took less than 15 minutes before I
had the first bass in the boat, 9 lbs!
By the time check-in came around I ended up
winning most lbs in the boat AND biggest fish of the day. Even with me cheating
the next day I still came I third but I did win biggest bass. yes I kind of won
but you know, I never fished another tournament after that. It didn't matter
that no one else knew I cheated, I did.
I also got hooked on using mud bugs
(crawdads, crayfish, etc) the big ones were great for trot lines and catfish
while the little ones are great for most everything else. This is another of
those things where I'm not sure if I thought they were great bait because they
were or just because I loved catching them and needed to justify doing it. the
best way to catch them is using a seine in the ponds down home. Since I'm
trying to be as truthful as possible here I have to admit that seining was my
number one favorite way of fishing! there's just something really fun about
dragging a seine through a pond, creek, river or lake and waiting to see what
you catch. I was always more than willing to help anyone do ti even if I wasn't
going to get to use ant bait we might get. You just never knew what might show
up from perch to bass to snakes, it was like Christmas with every pass of the
seine! The icing on the cake was the
fact that both mud bugs and minnows were great bait.
I should be at least a little ashamed of
this one, but I'm not. I used to go fishing in Arizona Okla.
We were headed back home on Sunday afternoon
when we came up with the idea of stopping off buy the number 1 canal and clean
our fish. Not sure why other than we could dump the guts in the canal instead
of doing it at home. The number 1 canal runs right outside chandler and is
bigger than a lot of creeks and rivers back home so it was a good place to
clean the fish. Since it comes right out of the Salt river
there are even fish in it even though most of it is just one big concrete
ditch. The other thing it does is run by several migrant farm worker camps.
Most of the workers that lived in those camps were poor Mexicans just trying to
make a living. I knew that lots of them fished in the canals although I'm
pretty sure they didn't do it for sport.
This time we pulled over next to the bridge,
pulled our ice chests out and started cleaning the fish. To tell the truth i
didn't even notice that there were other folks by the canal until some one ask
where we had caught all the fish. I looked up and there was this older Mexican
guy standing there watching us and several others along the canal bank with
fishing poles. Lee didn't say a world but, asshole that I am I popped off with
"right here, in this canal". His eyes got real big and he started
asking more questions like where, when and how. The how was the killer. I know
I was being a totally dip but I went to the truck and dug through my tackle
box. I came up with a 12 inch plastic worm. I'm not sure how that thing even
got in there. I know I had never used one that size but I did have all kinds of
strange stuff in that box. Anyway, I went off with this big story about how
that canal was just full of big crappie but the only way to catch them was by
using the biggest plastic worm you could get. Lee jumped right in by not only
agreeing with me he also dug out some hooks and was showing the guy how to rig
the worm. After Lee got it rigged we gave it to him and assured him that if he
used those he would have a bucket full of fish just like ours. I didn't think
he really believed us but he thanked us and wondered back to his group. As we
finished cleaning our fish and got ready to leave I noticed him talking to his
friends and handing the worm around. I figured they were talking about how
stupid we were and having a good laugh at us. I didn't mind, Lee and I had a
few chuckles over the whole thing ourselves. I had forgotten about the whole thing
by the time we got home.
It was a couple of weeks before we got a
chance to head up to the lake again but before we did, we needed to stop by the
local tackle shop and stock up on some more crappie jigs. We knew all the guys
who worked in the shop and we would always talk to them about fishing and where
were the best places to go or what the fish were biting. As we were checking
out we got in a debate over which color of crappie jig worked the best. As we
were talking to the guy behind the counter one of the other guys happened to
walk by and hear us "You should use plastic worms" he said "I
hear they're killers on crappie." Lee and I just stared at him because we
had know Idea what he was talking about. Lee finally asked what he meant and he
told us the a couple of weeks before there had been a group of guys come in and
buy every plastic worm they had. He shook his head and said it was odd because
they only wanted the biggest ones in the store. He said he'd ask them what they
were going to do with the worms and they had told him that they were the best
bait for crappie fishing in the canals.
I asked him what the group looked like and
he said they were a group of Mexicans, nothing special about them. I have no
doubt that I know what that group looked like. I guess they believed us more
than I thought.
To be continued..................
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